The First CCi Live Of The Year

On the morning of the show I didn’t want to be around the studio for too long because I didn’t want to get in the delivery team’s way as this can make matters more stressful for them. However I did briefly make sure everything was going okay for them, which I believe being a part of the production team providing them with all their content, should be one of our obligations.

I was very pleased with how the delivery team were very patient and did everything required of them and that the show seemed to go without any problems. This is particularly impressive with the strict time constraints forced upon them with content not being given to them as early as what would have been normal and content still being changed on the morning of the show.

From the feedback we received, I learnt several lessons that I will apply to our next show. We have to be exceptionally careful with the content in our show, this being most obvious with several answers we received and included in our edit during the fresher’s advice VT and in our news. We should not publicise anything about students drinking habits or small amounts of effort put into university work, and make sure all news and information is completely factually correct.

In regards to the interview we conducted with Amy Walker, I believe that the framing could have been better by removing the pillar from the left hand side. To do this I would have placed the interviewee on the left of the frame in front of the pillar, looking at the interviewer to the right hand side of the camera, so that you could see people working on computers in the background within the interviewee’s looking room, out of focus.

Sound also proved a problem due to the location and how busy it was. Ideally I also wouldn’t use the graphic screens with the questions written on them. Interviews like this are presented better when the interviewee’s answers lead the flow of the insert, but this is generally only possible when they repeat part of the question within their answer so that you don’t have to make it obvious what the question was.

The show also showed me how much you can trust the presenters to ad-lib and make the show more light-hearted and conversational. This generally only comes across well when the presenters are comfortable with each other because they have to bounce off each other to keep the conversation flowing.

For the time that we had to make the show, I was very happy with the outcome. I believe we made sure new viewers were educated as to what CCi Live is all about, and older viewers were made aware of all the new changes around them, these being the two biggest aims of the first show.

CCi Live - 28/09/2012

Straight Back In The Deep End

On Monday 24th September we were told our groups and I discovered that I was part of the group that would be producing the first live show on the upcoming Friday. This meant that we only had 4 days to decide upon our content, film and edit all of our inserts, write the script and produce all the required paperwork and additional content for a 30 minute live show. Due to this extremely tight deadline, we did not decide upon roles within the group because we all needed to pull together to make sure everything was done.

Unfortunately, due to these time constraints, we couldn’t be as adventurous as we perhaps would have liked in regards to our content and inserts, however this was not too much of a problem because as it was the first show back, the focus was more about a catch up and a welcome back for our current as well as new students. Charlie Watts, our course leader, helped us by sourcing an interview with Amy Walker, who helped design the new open access area, which we would record and use as an inert. The original plan was to do this section live, however the technical issues as well as the interviewees own wishes, deterred this from happening. As we did not really have enough time to film and edit all of our own inserts, we were given some assistance with the provision of an insert about how green screen works. This insert however was a good addition to the show as it showed people how CCi Live is put together and what can be achieved with the technology.

Doing quite a lot of the scriptwriting, I found that writing the script can be very difficult. This was because we had to lengthen it in areas to get the show closer to the 30 minutes that was required and as a scriptwriter you can get a ‘writers block’ where you struggle to think of things to say. This is why it is important to have more than one scriptwriter and make sure you have ‘fresh eyes’ in another person to look at it and see how it flows as well as think of more content to add if necessary. The script was also slightly cheesy in places, however in the CCi Live branding it says it should be ‘fun, light and not take itself too seriously’ so this was not too much of an issue.