Assignment Three: Week Six Re-Cap

Reflecting on the reading, ‘Unscripted Live’ reflects many of the feelings that I had been involved in Assignment Three – the “struggle to satisfy both the professional desire for control and the absent viewer’s alleged desire for ‘liveness’ in the production” is something that rang true for me in the making and developing of this assignment. Although the element of ‘liveness’ is greatly achieved, if this is element is pre-recorded, they need to make sure that it is still believable when it goes to air, to keep the illusive ideas for the audience wanting their ‘live’ fix. Saying this, the live element does not always go as planned, which is something that is unavoidable. We watched the live interview with Nicole Kidman + Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show – the original interview did not go to plan, so everyone had to adapt to what was happening on stage. Furthermore, the design of the format that I had to develop for my writing is something that is further discussed in the reading. The reading subject about positioning and framing in live-ness to continue the ‘realness’ of the medium, which is something we tried to focus on through our own camera framing. Introducing the studio audience is something the reading expresses and touches on, both it’s importance and it’s downfall. I thought to have a live audience, particularly for our own production, was something that was particularly important for the live interaction and ‘following’ along with the questions as well as interacting with the audience. The topic of pre-briefing the questions before you start the process of the live broadcast is questionable, for our own situation, it was not needed, however, there are many pros and cons for this. In some ways, you can get a unique and realistic answer from the subject, however, there is always that element of “I wish I had said that” or “I could have phrased that better”. Overall, the reading was significant to our situation and exposed the importance of giving off different elements of ‘liveness’ to portray that to the audience, whether it is pre-recorded or otherwise.