Today was our first venture into TV production and what makes a broadcast work. Vanessa gave us a tour of studio D and its gallery, and showed us the ropes. Firstly she showed us the very basics in how to use the big technical cameras, just things like zoom, pan, focus, tilt and how to physically move the camera around the studio space. However it was among the hundreds of lights and buttons in the gallery where I felt more at home. Once again we were only really shown the basics of everything in there as we didn’t have the time to learn what everything did. I was particularly interested in the audio and switching (vision mixing) stations as something to explore because they seemed like a sensible enough place to start in a gallery, simple enough to learn, not complicated enough to confuse and put me off.

After all this was done we did a mock broadcast with Sam presenting and asking Ellie questions about our media city visit the week previously. I was in charge of audio, making sure all the levels were set and that over the course of the interview that Sam and Ellie sounded the same consistently.

As I’ve mentioned previously, anything audio or technical at this point I’m all for it, so while it was simple and dare I say easy, I still really enjoyed myself, it was the PM session that I enjoyed less however. I was in charge of the script and then when no one volunteered to present, I did that too. I ended up on camera with Tina talking about the Uni experience so far and how she was finding it. It was a very light script that was very choppy in places but as a start it wasn’t half bad. The most complicated part was trying to appear like I was facing and talking to Tina while trying to read the auto cue that I wrote! overall the experience was absurdly positive, I really enjoyed it and I even didn’t hate being on camera as much as I thought I would.

The last thing we did was give out roles for next weeks session where we would be doing an ‘actual’ broadcast where everyone would have specific roles and where we would properly film it and go through it. Once again I ‘volunteered’ to present.