Week 8 - Final Assessment

This week was the week. The week of our final assessment.

We had 7 assessed takes to do, as well as rehearsals to ensure that the show ran smoothly based on what we had planned.
During these rehearsals it was evident that I needed to change the PA Schedule I had made so that the show flowed better, so I did this according to the takes.

As producer of the show, today was EXTREMELY stressful for me as the group were all relying on me to instruct what we were doing, collect the pre-production tasks together to create our portfolio, etc.
Tensions were running high throughout the day due to stress and I will admit that I cracked at one point, but overall I feel that I handled my role as producer throughout the day and course very professionally and was very pleased with my assessed roles.

I feel the day as a whole went really well and I'm really proud of myself, my team and the product that we created. I am very excited to hopefully work in TV again in the future.

Week 7

In this week's production day we went over the pre-production roles that everyone had been assigned to ensure that they had all been done. We then continued to design the set and lighting to ensure that we were all happy with it. Everyone split off into different roles so that we could get everything done asap and once we came back from a break, we decided to try and run through the show. This was disastrous at first as nobody really knew what they were doing, but by the end of the session we had managed to get a full timings schedule for the PA and confirm an external presenter which meant that all in all we had a successful session.

We have got the studio booked from 2pm-12am the day before our assessment as well, which will be extremely helpful for the final run-through's (to ensure it'll run smoothly on the day) and so our presenter can meet everyone and get comfortable with the script.

I have attached some action shots from the day.

Week 6

Production Day. This is the start of us finalising our planning for the show that we are going to film for our assessed piece in two weeks time. 

Myself and Jack were appointed as Producers of the show, meaning I have a lot of responsibility in the outcome of the show. 

After many wasted hours of back and fourth discussion, we finally came out with our finalised idea for our show. 

We are going to host a game show called ‘Traitor’. The show consists of two teams of 2 and one presenter. The two teams will go head to head of two rounds and the winning team will then turn on each other and battle against each other to win in the final round.

We were able to finalise pre-production roles and most of the assessed roles that people want to do, meaning that next week we should almost have a completed portfolio folder (providing everybody does their work!).

My pre-production roles are: Production Schedule, PA Schedule and Crew Roles (as I had already started this process in between weeks 5 and 6).

My assessed roles will be: PA and Camera Operator.

I have attached some of the plans we made during our session.

Week 5

This week we had the task of running a game show called: Don’t Stop the Music. This was particularly interesting as a game show was our main idea as what to do for our final recorded piece. I started off by being PA for the first take, which resulted in me having to advise the presented that they were ad-libbing too much and we had to cut the final round short. I was proud that I picked this is up as this is crucial in live television as you are not able to run over and it meant that we were able to cut it short without the audience noticing.

I then took my role as presenter of the second take, something which was very intimidating and I won't be doing again!

I acted as Floor Manager in the third and final take and found the role very fun to do, however I enjoyed camera more and found is more of a challenge so have decided to stick with that for my assessed role.

Week 4

This week we moved onto producing a News Programme. We had to insert 8 VT’s with a running transcript throughout (no room for ad-lib). I decided to act as a camera operator for one of the takes and went onto vision mixing for another.

On camera I had to crab left and zoom in at the same time for the opening of the programme, something which was very stressful as you had to ensure that it was slick and professional. This was praised by Matt afterwards, which helped seal my want for Camera Operator to be my other assessed role. 

I then tried out Vision Mixing. Having this be my first time doing so, it was quite stressful as I had a director who left me to do the work assuming I knew which shots to put in where after the VT’s. This was difficult as I had never done this role before, however after a rehearsal run I was able to know what I was doing and only made one minor slip up in the recorded take by accidentally changing a camera shot too quickly.

Week 3

Now that I am becoming more confident in the different roles, I decided to give acting a go. I acted as a guest for the show we were making. The show was a review show of different family games, in particular Twister in which we had to insert a VT (something we've never done before). After I spent most of my time consumed in pretending to fall over whilst playing the game, I then undertook the role of PA again for the second take. I find the role of PA very enjoyable as you are the one who is keeping track and ensuring everything is on time, playing a key role to the director. I have decided that this is a role that I want to be assessed on.

I have learnt that it is essential to get a feel for the show so that you are able to assess whether there is too much ad-lib occurring or whether the presented and guests need to slow their pace down. Although a very stressful job, being PA is very rewarding.

Week 2

After learning how to do most of the roles in last week’s session and directed study, we began to record an 8 minute show with the topic of favourite TV shows/films. I was originally assigned to be PA by Matt, something that I was happy about as I particularly like this role. This meant that I had acted as: PA, camera operator and director. I found the role very stressful with Matt directing as you had to keep up with his industry standard expectations, which was quite difficult! After this I had a go as a camera operator which was enlightening as it's a lot harder that you'd expect!