Workshop films/output
Being in a Television Studio:
For this unit one of the most important aspects to research was actually creating an As Live show and working in a Television Studio environment. It is vital to know what the purpose of each space is in the studio, as well as each role and what they consist of. I also wanted to understand how communication worked around the studio and between the gallery and the studio. Jonathan was really good at explaining clearly to us how the studio space worked, and the purpose of everything in there. He began by walking us around and talking through it all, this was incredibly useful as when being in a studio it is important to know how it all works as well as the studio terminology (Brown et al, 2016:39) I was surprised by the amount elements in the studio that served a specific purpose that I have seen multiple times but never known what they do. For example the is a red line on the floor surrounding the studio space called the 'fire line' thus if the fire alarm were to go off and you could not find your way out the the studio, the line shows you that you are at the edge. As Producer it was important to know this as we are in charge of all safety aspects of the show (Small, 2000:5).
After walking around the studio space we went into the control room and this a an "incredibly important place" (Brown et al, 2016:54) as this is where the programme is assembled. Thus it is really important to have good communication between the gallery and the studio floor and I learnt that "this is done via a telecoms talk- back system" (Brown et al, 2016:54) and this ensures that the production team are all able to hear the director, and good communication is established which is very important in television production (Kellison, 2008:14).
Talk back was an element from this workshop that really interested me, hence I wanted to look further into it. Jonathan had described to us how there is a certain etiquette that should be adhered to when using it (Brown et al, 2016:54), yet I wanted to expand my knowledge on this. From watching a short online video I discovered that you should be "as concise as possible" (BBC Academy, 2017) and to remember it as "ABC: Accurate, Clear and Brief." (BBC Academy, 2017) Learning this abbreviation really helped when being in the studio following this as whenever I needed to use it I thought back to Jonathan stating to always say your name and who you are addressing, and then to be accurate, brief and clear with the message. I really enjoyed using the talkback, although to start with it was a little hard to get the hang of which buttons to push to speak and getting the volume right, but once we had used it a few times I really liked it. Furthermore when working in the television industry I will now be able to feel confident with using talkback so it has really enhanced my skillset.
Vision Mixing:
During the vision mixing workshops, I probably had the biggest surprise that I have had during the whole As Live Unit. I feel that my skill set with the very technical side of television production is quit limited and I get easily confused with it, hence the thought of vision mixing was an aspect that I felt rather worried about. Jonathan taught us that "the vision mixer sits in the gallery" (Brown et al, 2016:50) and is "responsible for cutting the programme live" (Brown et al, 2016:50). When first going through how the vision mixing board works I felt rather overwhelmed by all the buttons and then when throwing the thought of having stacked graphics and VT's via the up and down stream keys (Brown et al, 2016:51) into it I felt a bit worried.
During the workshop we set up some 4K Panasonics and then connected them to the monitor via HDMI cables, Jonathan taught us that in the television industry you typically use SDI cables as show in Fig () so it was good to know this as I assumed that they would use HDMI's.
In the next vision mixing workshop it was during rehearsal week and we were getting to try vision mixing in the gallery. I found this even more exciting as we got to direct and vision mix at the same time. Jonathan taught us to say "coming to" and then the shot number, followed by "take it" when we wanted to use the shot. A challenge that I did have was that I kept falling into the trap of 'watching television' as Jonathan described it as I was at moments too busy watching what was being transmitted rather than looking at the previews. Thus in future if I were directing an As Live show with a vision mixer next to me an aspect that I would like to improve is with making sure that I am concentrating on the previews in order to create the best programme I can.
I find it incredibly though that I went from being afraid of vision mixing and the very technical side of creating an As Live show, to actually using the stream deck in the real broadcast on production day to display some of the game graphics. This alone shows that a workshop ignites the skill and then it is developed as the unit progresses and research is undertook, and that if you try the things that you are afraid of, you may actually turn out to enjoy them.
Scripting:
As Producers one of the most important jobs that we had was to write the script for Trending, and working out the logistics of it (Brown et al, 2016:4). Admittedly, this was a task that I was not looking forward to as I did not know where to begin. Luckily Jonathan held a very useful online workshop on tips with writing the script and this was very beneficial to us.
Jonathan advised us to start by splitting the script into a "two column layout" as this way we can focus on the audio to start with and then the director could add the visuals. This helped us to really focus on what dialogue we needed. We used the running order to aid us and broke the script into different items as this way we could work out exactly how much scripted dialogue that we need. A great piece of advice that Jonathan told us that I also later found when researching is to "read the script through and see how it flows" (Brown et al, 2016:19) and this was so helpful as it is easy to write dialogue down and it may sound okay on the page, but to actually read it out helps with knowing how it will sound in the programme. Jonathan also advised us to always write in an active voice, however I had never done this before and took to research to find out that "active voice is when a sentence has a subject that acts upon its verb" (Traffis, 2021) meaning that dialogue will be strong, direct and clear. Additionally it mean that instead of talking about how something may happen in the show, instead it will happen. I feel pleased that I now know how to write in active voice as that is another skill that I have developed during this unit.
We then started to face hurdles as sometimes we would forget to read through certain items as there were quite a lot, and then some we would accidentally miss when checking it is written in an active voice. Nonetheless myself and George came up with a solution and created a system when writing every draft of the script. One of us would read the script allowed, whilst the other would make sure that it sounds good and it is written in an active voice, and then we would switch. This meant the the whole script was thoroughly read and it avoided us from missing anything out.
Once we had out very first draft of the script we then added extra columns, to help with this we viewed a sample script from the chase and took influence from the structure of it. The columns from left to right were the visuals, then the audio, and then the notes. I felt quite happy with the first draft, but looking back now it came a really long way from this.
We have a session with Jonathan in which he gave us feedback for it, and this consisted of needing to be careful with the wording as there were moments where we had used words such as "learn" and Jonathan pointed out that this may put people off from watching as they want to be entertained. This was a really good point that I had not thought of hence it made me realise how careful with wording you have to be, as I would not want anyone to be put off from watching due to us using the wrong word. Furthermore with scripting I had not realised the precision that had to be put into it. Jonathan also pointed out that the script had no item numbers on it and once we added this I realised how vital it was that they were there, as we were all able to read the script and indicate what section we were talking about through the item number. Finally, Jonathan gave us such a useful piece of advice; he told us that sometimes in Television Production they create a different coloured script for each draft so that people can easily describe what script they are referring to through the colour of it. I am really happy that we did this as we ended up having eight drafts of the script hence we could easily recognise what version we could refer to.
Fig. 6 Page one of script draft one
When reflecting on the scripting process, it was a lot harder harder I thought it was going to be as I have never written a 30 minute script before, let alone one that is for an As Live show. We learnt useful tips along the way such as adding colour to indicate VT's and graphics which really helped Reece when directing. When looking at the script now, I feel so happy and positive with how it turned out, and not only that but now I have the skills to go through a script writing process like this again.
Blocking:
A workshop that we had when in the studio was with blocking and marking out the set. A television studio is a very big space (BBC Academy, 2016), and initially I thought this would be something quite simple to do as it was just measuring out where everything will go and then taping down the outlines of the set. Hence when walking into the studio myself and George got some masking tape and marked where we wanted the platform and areas of the set to go. Jonathan pointed out however that we had marked it out very close to the fire line, hence giving no room for back lighting which is the second most important form of lighting. I feel that we forgot that the set was a temporary structure (Brown et al, 2016:56), hence once we had put one marking down we believed that it could not be moved. We started to peel up the tape and move it forwards, away from the fire line, leaving at least 3m distance between the back of the set and the cyclorama.
We then used the number measurements on the wall to work out exactly where the centre of the studio was and we worked form there. This helped us to make sure that our measurements were accurate, as well as meaning that everything was centred as then we could work the cameras, autocue, and lighting around these measurements. In reflection, this was the aspect of being in the studio that I thought would be the simplest, however it was the most time consuming as it was so important to get the placement of the set right as everything then works around this. Furthermore I now know how to walk into a television studio and block out a set accurately which is a great skill to have.
List of Illustrations:
Fig. 1 Emmerson, S. (2021) Studio Space
Fig. 2 Emmerson, S. (2021) Using Talk back
Fig. 3 Emmerson, S. (2021) SDI cable
Fig. 4 Emmerson, S. (2021) vision mixing
Fig. 5 Emmerson, S. (2021) Sample script
Fig. 6 Emmerson, S. (2021) Page one of script draft one
Fig. 7 Emmerson, S. (2021) Script draft eight
Fig. 8 Emmerson, S. (2021) Studio floor
Fig. 9 Emmerson, S. (2021) numbers in studio
Bibliography:
Brown, L., Duthie, L. (2016) The TV Studio Production Handbook. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Kellison, C. (2008) Producing for TV and a New Media: a Real World Approach Oxford: Focal. At: https://myuca.uca.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/content/contentWrapper.jsp?course_id=_70230_1&displayName=Reading%20List&href=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Fblti%2FlaunchPlacement%3Fblti_placement_id%3D_300_1%26course_id%3D_70230_1%26mode%3Dview%26wrapped%3Dtrue (Accessed 15/04/2021)
Small, R. (2000) Production Safety for Film, Television, and Video Oxford: Focal Press. At: https://myuca.uca.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/content/contentWrapper.jsp?course_id=_70230_1&displayName=Reading%20List&href=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Fblti%2FlaunchPlacement%3Fblti_placement_id%3D_300_1%26course_id%3D_70230_1%26mode%3Dview%26wrapped%3Dtrue (Accessed 16/04/2021)
BBC Academy. (2017) Guide to Studio Talkback At: https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20130702112135564 (Accessed 22/04/2021)
BBC Academy (2016) Guide to a TV Studio At: https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20130702112135564 (Accessed 22/04/2021)
Traffis, C. (2021) Active Vs Passive Voice At: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/active-vs-passive-voice/ (Accessed 12/04/2021)
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