As Live Production Unit - Second Rehearsal

Today was my second rehearsal with del and the team and things went a lot better than the first one. We did the same as before marking out the set and going through the movements and script whilst I sat in the gallery directing over talk back. We started again with the introduction, and the first part which is steals of the season.

Once everyone was on talk back I was able to direct the presenters and stand in's to their positions. I made sure cameras were all lined up where they were meant to be and what shot to begin on. I then got the P.A.s to give me a count down and asked them to roll the VT. Although we didn't have the real VT's that we were going to use in the show, we were still able to use other ones in their place so that I could cue in on time. We still did not have stings or music either but Del wanted me to get used to the timings and cueing in at the right time. I struggled on the first go forgetting stings and lining up camera shots quick enough. It was also apparent that the steals of the season section was taking a lot longer than the producers anticipated and felt it may need to be cut down to make the show work better.

By my third and fourth go I was starting to get into the swing of it. I kept myself calm and kept persisting on with it which helped me a lot rather than getting stressed and losing it altogether. I did one run through of these two sections and everything was looking a lot better. I was hitting my timings and lining up my shots better as well as my graphics. We decided to move onto the fashion fails section as I had not gone through this yet.

Since the VT had been shot we knew what the outfit was so we were able to bring this in on the mannequin to help run through this section. The camera plan that I had wrote before didn't seem to work with the shots that I needed. I also found this very complicated as we needed so much coverage based on what they were talking about. An example of this would be when they were talking about the bag, I needed a close up of the bag and then they would talk about the necklace so I needed to get a close up of that but also bridge it with a wide. This will take some getting use to but I'm sure over time I will start to get to grips with it more as I understand what I have to do but I need to make sure It works. The next problem was going from static to handheld with the cameras. I didn't have a good enough shot to change to when the camera operator was taking going from the tripod to handheld so I will have to plan an alternative for this.

Overall I think Im really improving but there is still a lot more work to do to get to the level I want to be at and to fix hidden logistics that have shown themselves in this rehearsal which I will look at over the easter break.