Jasmine Kylie Show

Jasmine Kylie Show

Coming back from our reading week, our class were set the challenge to work with the third year actors (who we had previously worked with before) to put on a meet and greet show. Obviously the actors themselves came up with the whole concept of the show, however for our class it was our task to make the show happen. 

I had immediately put myself forward to work on the camera's as I had previously worked with one but I wasn't that familiar with how they worked and often became confused with the movements of them. I also put myself forward because previously I had either been working on sound or in the gallery, when doing these jobs, I always wanted to try and operate a camera and to my luck I was assigned camera 1!

What is a camera operator?

Camera operators operate the cameras. This job includes rigging the cameras, ensuring each camera is on its mount. At the end of the day this would also include de-rigging the cameras also. Camera Operators are to follow camera cards which show them where and what position the camera should be at a certain aspect of the show. ‘Camera Operators need to listen to the script supervisor’s shot calling and the director’s instructions and sometimes to the vision mixer’s instructions” Cue and Cut

When I took on the job role of camera operator I knew what it would entail, but when on the camera one aspect I found especially hard was to actually move the camera in the right direction whilst trying to record. Once given advice by my lecturer I soon found out that I was making the job a lot harder than it actually was and soon after was moving the camera smoothly.

Here is an insert of the final cut of ‘The Jasmine Kylie Show’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEwMcjdnl9s 

I think with working on camera 1 I had the hardest job of all of the camera operators as this was the camera that has the most movement and also had a lot of different and difficult camera angles to achieve. One that you can see in the show is when the second guest (Karl) came into my shot, I had to change from and single mid shot to a two shot and one thing that I wasn’t expecting with them was the height difference this made it a bit harder to try and position the shot.

One more movement which was a bit of a struggle was getting camera 1 to where the band was playing and back to the presenter again as it was the only dependable camera to go back and forth from each insert. For this I needed a bit of help from the floor manager and the movement had to be swift.

 I thoroughly enjoyed being in the making of the ‘Jasmine Kylie Show’ and although I suffered from a few issues, I felt like I overcame them within a professional way. On this show I learnt a lot about cameras and have a much better knowledge of how they work, meaning any pre conceptions I had have now been cleared up now for future work.

Reading Week

Reading Week

During my reading week I was set the task to research studio based TV feature Programmes, at first I was unsure about what these types of shows were. Although researching into them it soon became clear what they were and what they consisted of. Over reading week apart from seeing all my friends I looked into a few and soon became quite interested into them, with watching a lot of the ones I researched and writing notes with them all showing a common similarity to them. This was that many of the shows where designed to suit a certain audience.

This is what I wrote down within my research, as you can see one of my favourite TV shows anyway was ‘The Great British Bake Off’ so when I found out this was a studio based TV program I was very happy, as this also gave me a reason to watch a whole season of the show. What we also were set the task to do was if we were to make a show like this what would you create. For me this was very easy, I am very into my crime and psychological programs and for me there are not enough of these around which are local to a specific area. So for an example ‘Crimewatch’ that’s the kind of show I would like to recreate, but make it specific to an area for example, where I am from in Berkshire, it would be nice to have a show where the people watching are from the same area and also in terms of catching people that are doing the crimes would probably be a lot easier with the majority of the people watching would all be from the same area.  

In my reading week I was slightly unsure on why we were asked to do this, however coming back after the week in our first lecture it soon became clear to me that this was because we were planning a meet and great show, which would be aimed at a specific types of audience. In that lecture we went over what we had all found out about studio based TV feature programmes and then talked about how we would interpret all our findings into a show that us as a class where going to produce. From my point of view who became at the least a bit obsessed with these types of shows I thought that producing a show like this would be really exciting and it filled me with a lot of excitement.

Music Video 'Falling'

Music Video 'Falling'

Soon after the meet and greet show, we went straight into a new aspect of studio production and this to my delight was producing a music video. With having being musical in the past and having a keen ear for music this production was straight up my street. Before we got started on the project, we first had a lecture on music videos and how to count beats and bars. This lecture was so interesting for me as I know how to count beats in a bar but putting it into making a music video was really intriguing for me at least! At the end of that lesson we had no say in what we wanted to do but more what our lecturer wanted us to do.

During that week we found out that it was a first year commercial music student called Gabrielle Larkin along side second year music student Craig Medlin and the song was called ‘Falling.’ The next week I find out that I am on VT and grams. At first I had no clue what grams consisted of however I have had experience of rolling the VT before.

What is a VT and Grams?

A Videotape Operator plays in pre recorded material for rehearsals and recordings and then looks after the recordings. They also make the VT clock for each rehearsals and takes. Music and effects are played out by a gram’s operator.

https://youtu.be/0YyYQD2r1Es

When operating the VT and Grams it became clear to me that these two roles would be normally operated by two different people. Although it wasn’t the most challenging job of working off these both, one aspect that I found was to start the music video, it became a bit of a rush because everything was depending on me pressing record, then starting the clock and further on playing the backing track into the studio floor. For that part I did feel a bit of pressure, as that was the only important part of my job role to make sure the show is being recorded, making the countdown clock correct for each rehearsal and take and to play the music in on 3 seconds exactly.

Although this job wasn’t necessarily a big hands on part of the production, someone has to be on the case. What I liked about being in the gallery was the atmosphere, and I think I prefer the gallery to the studio floor as I like being able to see what is being done behind the cameras. But not only that, I feel like being in the gallery lets you see what the finished production could look like and with each aspect of working in the gallery you can see what your work is doing to be put into the production, as for me I can see my VT clock on the big screen and can hear the backing track being played into the studio floor.

Although I was a bit sceptical at first of what the job role included and thinking I wasn’t that involved with the production, I realised that actually without me the production most likely wouldn’t have been able to happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW9I1XNdfR0