After our initial sessions with Del, today we were getting some hands on experience in the studio, trying out different roles. We were also working with talkback for the first time, which took some getting used to. We mainly stuck with shooting a chat show-esque format, alternating between roles such as vision mixer, director, floor manager and more:
Vision Mixer
Of course I was eager to get my hands on the vision mixing desk first after getting a brief taste of it last time and I feel I took to it fairly quickly and the experience really made me excited to do this job for our show. From my prior research and this experience, I found that the key skill of the vision mixer is to remain calm and listen to what the director wants, as they are (literally) calling the shots.
Since we had the time to, I jumped at the opportunity to have a second go at being vision mixer for this exercise. This time Del asked me to try some more complex cuts, such as a split screen. For this, I essentially had to cut to another mix effects bus and leave the T-bar on a half-wipe. He also asked me to add a border to the wipe, which I worked out by looking at the monitor and adding changing the border size and colour.
Overall, I am so glad that I went for and was picked for this job. Of all the other roles, I feel I fit best into vision mixing. From my experience and interest in editing, vision mixing gave a new twist to editing as everything was live and I was making the cuts as the footage was being recorded. I am very excited to practice more.
Camera Operator
I found operating the camera fairly straightforward in the exercise, as I am familiar with the cameras from other projects. I feel that I did fairly well, although I did struggle with re-framing and re-focusing from time to time, and it became very tempting to lock the tripod head, which Del had forbade for any camera that had to move.
Sound Operator
This went disastrously wrong in my opinion but that was largely due to a lack of preparation. When trying to work out the individual sliders and buttons, I did not realise how little time I had before we went 'live', and so I missed my cue on several occasions. This was a good insight into the studio portion of sound compared to working as on-location sound op for the VTs. Similar principals applied, such as keeping speech being at an optimum -6 dB.
Talent
Although none of us would actually feature as talent in the show, it was refreshing to see how the presenters will have to work in the show. For example, being cued in by the floor manager and ensuring that the segment wrapped in time to the floor managers count. This was a lot harder than it looked and I have gained a new level of understanding into what our talent will have to put up with during the show.
PA
In my opinion, this was the most stressful job, as the PA needs to multitask a lot and cope with counting down on different timers. The PA needs to be very calm and patient to ensure that they keep time with the show.
VT Operator
Since we only had one test VT to play, the role of VT operator seemed fairly easy from this taster, but once we had some actual VTs to rehearse with including stings and credits, I can see this job getting more intense depending on the type of show. The VT operator also has, arguably, the most important role during the live recording as they have to actually hit the record button to record the show.
Floor Manager
Even though I had never done this before, I feel I was a terrible floor manager. It is the job of the floor manager to communicate the needs of the director to the studio floor. This includes counting in the talent to the their mark and ensuring they wrap up when they are supposed to. I completely missed my mark for wrapping up the show and the talent ended up carrying on talking after we had cut. This certainly gave me an appreciation for how important it is for the floor manager to effectively communicate between the studio and the gallery.
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