The world of in-studio filming is one I have no experience in and so I had no real expectations setting out on the studio tour this week. All my filming experience has been on location and I had thought that studio filming would be pretty much the same except you had someone in the backroom controlling the lights. Boy, was I wrong. As the wealth of different roles involved were introduced and explained I became a bit overwhelmed by the complexity of the work that goes into shows and segments that I had taken for granted. Already this is becoming a theme in this class for me, as I was similarly impacted when we watched the video in class of behind the scenes at the Oscars. What appears on screen as a fairly slow stately affair is achieved through manic co-operation and action backstage. It reminds me slightly of a beehive or an anthill, teeming with the actions of individuals who are together able to achieve something great.

When we came to the control room of Studio A I’ll admit my first thought was imagining myself at one of those big panels of buttons wearing a Star Trek Uniform and confidently pressing away to bring the shields up. They seem like something out of a sci-fi spaceship and it boggles my mind that someone could actually know what all those buttons do, but I imagine it, like many things, looks more complicated from the outside. Or at least I hope so because I would love to get behind one of them someday.

‘Captain, we’ve got 30 seconds till we’re live and the Klingons mics are down’

Going into the studio tour I had been thinking about what role I wanted to take on for our second assignment and was pretty firmly in the audio camp. I have an interest in Foley work and sound design and thought it’d be good to check out some other aspects of audio, specifically how it operates in a studio environment. However, as we went on through the tour I kept being lured in by all these different roles I had never even considered. I wanted to be behind the EVS desk pushing the buttons, but since that wasn’t needed for this particular assignment I’ll pop that on hold. The other thing that intrigued me was our tour guides description of floor managers. As he talked about how a good floor manager had to be vocal on the floor, I was thinking ‘ I love to talk!’. As he mentioned a floor manager he knew who was successful due to his friendliness I was thinking ‘I love being friendly!’. And when he said that the floor manager was in charge of managing everyone on the studio floor I was thinking ‘I love being in charge!’.

I was lucky enough that when we split back up into groups I was able to get the floor manager position and I’m excited to try it out after everything we saw on the studio tour. Before the tour I didn’t know what I didn’t know about in-studio filming, it was really helpful to get an idea of what goes on and what roles there are out there.