Society Spotlight

At 11AM on Thursday 21st February, Society Spotlight went live from the second floor open space in the Eldon Building. After months of planning, the success of the project came down to a single one hour show. The idea for the show was to showcase a variety of University societies through pre-recorded clips, live demonstration's and interviews. The show would not be broadcasted from the usual CCi Studio, but from an outside broadcast location. Therefore the studio equipment would need to be transported and set-up in an environment not usually suitable for television broadcasting. This was a good learning experience as having an understanding of what equipment is required for a broadcast and how to set it up is important in the industry. My experience of several other shoots such as the end of year fashion show and Remembrance Day coverage, helped me further understand this process.

Throughout the project, my role was to help with some of the organisational tasks, create paperwork and assist during film shoots. I took it upon myself to create a call sheet that would be sent out to the production team before the live show, to ensure that the production on the day would run as smoothly as possible.

I also managed to use my GoPro camera during some of the shoots, including the Octopush and Break Dance VT's. Achieving good shots in these environments proved a challenge, however the use of GoPro's enabled us to overcome these to good effect. We would not have been able to film most of the action involved in Octopush without using the GoPro's underwater capabilities, and obtaining some of the shots during Break Dance, such as from the ceiling, could only be done by something so small with such good mounting options.

On the day of the show, my role was production assistant and so I tried my best to ensure that everything was running smoothly. Along with Michael Parsons, I had created the running order with as much information as possible to ensure the show would flow well and finish on the hour. Using stopwatches and this running order, I managed to keep each section of the programme on track and end the show at precisely an hour. Unfortunately there were a couple of small mistakes throughout the show and so when these were edited out afterwards, the shows duration decreased slightly. Crewing a live one hour show was challenging yet rewarding, and crewing the second groups show at 2:00 added to this further, myself being production assistant again for this. This was also made harder by not being able to have a run through due to time constraints.

Society Spotlight - 21/2/13