Talent-Presenter

I found that being talent was quite boring. Lots of sitting around and walking to and from the chair. However being talent gave me a unique view of the studio in operation. I was more of an outsider looking in than a cog in the studio drive train. I was able to see things more objectively. From that i was able to see the what could have been done better and what was done well as i saw it on the floor.

One thing i noticed was the lack of info given by the floor manager. Most of the time he was quite good but very now and then i had no idea what was going on. His cues were good and easy to follow. I also noticed the importance of the autocue persons speed (not as easy as first thought). I thought Andrew on camera one did a good job mostly and his tracks were of particular note.

I also now have a bit more respect fo actors and will try to make them as comfortableas i can, now knowing how out of place they can feel with the crew working.

Camera One

This week I operated camera one. I was a little nervous because as far as I can remember this is the first time I have been on a camera for Hello Riverina. The biggest thing that I was afraid of was the moves at both the start and end of the show. It looks simple on TV but as I tried it I found out that it is much harder in reality when I have pan, tilt, zoom and track the camera all at once while keeping myself looking at the viewfinder! The first few times were shaky but I felt more confident as I practiced a few more times. The biggest problem I had that Bruce helped me spot was that I wasn’t panning the camera but trying to track faster to keep the presenter in the shot. I never got it perfectly right and during the record run I felt that my performance on the camera was lower than it had been in the practices.

The worst mistakes I made during the session were moving while on air and a terrible track at the end. I think I had got so use to the rhythm of the show that I just moved like I normally would have without even checking the tally lights. It is a mistake that I will very much try and hope will never happen again to me. The end track was in my opinion the worst I did all day, but that isn’t a good excuse. I think more camera experience will help me get a grasp of how to perform a pan, tilt, zoom, and track better in the future.

Pat and Bruce commented at the end of the session that the quality of the show had dropped. I agree and think it is because we may have been getting a little cocky and use to the routine. I felt it was also because many people were in positions that they felt uncomfortable in or had never been in that position. This was especially evident in the control room and floor.

My floor manager often passed on information that I had already hard on comms about shot sizes and angles. This got annoying especially when he kept checking my shot in the viewfinder. He also had a problem where he would remove the headphone off his ear when talking to people on the floor and leaves it off. I had to tell him several times there were people wanting him. The AFM did a good job making up for this. He also stood in front of my camera where I was going to track every time at the star and gave a wrong cue because he didn’t tell the talent the first countdown was for the tapes, these was the only issues on the last run through, he did everything else very well.

I could hear the troubles I the control room. This highlighted to me the importance of good communication in the control room and the Director and Assistant director’s communication especially.

Tele-Prompt

I was on the tele-prompt this week. I was a little concerned as i hadn't used the tele-prompt before the assessment. However i had asked some of the other proddies that had done the tele-prompt about what to expect. The task of setting it up was very straight forward. The only problem I found was where i could put it to have the best vantage point of the action so that i could see all the people I needed to and the cues they were being given. I found the floor manager kept me informed for the most part about where we were in the script and production.

The hardest part about the tele-prompting was getting the script right on the prompting software. The spelling errors and lines not being left were easy to pick up as were missing sentences. The hard things to pick up were words spelt wrong but still made a real word and words with an 's' missing. However i was able to pick all of these up after the second run through. I had to tell the talent a few times when a word was grossly miss pronounced.

The pace of the tele-prompt I found was hard to gauge because of the varying speeds at which it was read. I found that most of the crew seemed to be doing well. There were a few times the camera people needed assistance but by the end they were doing well. I found this studio position to be a little boring and were I doing it for a few weeks, i would be getting very restless. I think I am beginning to prefer positions in the control room to those on the floor but it is only early days yet.

Directing 20-5-05

In my first week of assessment I was the director in the afternoon crew. I was nervous about this position as it is considered one of the hardest by my peers. When i started i was a little unsure on what ii had to do before the production but after five minutes and a deadline being set I just got to work. The tapes operator was late to the class which meant that the timings of the tapes was not able to be ascertained as soon as I wanted.

At several points during the day i set times for the step through and practice runs. I had to change almost all the times except for my record run. Bruce challenged me at one point to not leave lots of time where nothing is happening so i tried to keep things rolling. During the debrief i was told that the production had momentum and pace which is the way i wanted it to be run, because people tend to perform better when they have no time to fool around.

During the practice runs i was trying to look at the monitor wall and the script which caused me to loose my place in the show several times. By the time the record run came along I had become familiar enough with the show to not be 100% reliant on the script and the predetermined cuts. I had a problem with the vision mixer at one point in the record run when the wrong source was selected. I just kept calling the show as usual.

During he interview i found it difficult to choose which camera to cut to, as i had no idea about the questions or content. Bruce and Storrie were able to give me advice on camera selection and cut points which i tried to take on board but in the end cut to too many reaction shots of the interviewer no the interviewee.

I found the experience of directing challenging but by the end of the day i felt quite comfortable directing the show. I found that the FM could have given me more info from the floor, not just when i spoke to her. I had some trouble with camera 3 as the operator kept giving me variations of the shot that had ben previously set and moved the camera at the wrong time during the interview only leaving me with one camera which i tried to correct by asking for a two shot from camera 2. The DA also missed and gave a few late VTR roll commands but as a whole was good. Cameras 1 and 2 were both good and needed little direction in their shots.

To me it felt that some of the crew on that day were in positions that they were not comfortable in. I think that overall i did an alright job however i was disappointed with the end result as it wasn't of the highest quality. Some things that could make the process better would be to record the last practice and final run, a check list for the director and all people generally knowing a little more about their particular roles responsibilities.

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