The studio tour proved to be an insightful process for me as I got to see the behind-the- scenes works of TV production after weeks of talking about it. I think being able to tangibly see everything up close and personal really accentuated the idea of liveness for me- it’s like talking about something for so long and then finally seeing it in person to solidify the idea of it.
The guy brought us around the different studios and the control room and went through what each mechanism does. He explained how each would be used during a live broadcast and even showed us examples of it while fiddling with the screens/buttons. The idea that these little buttons and hinges were created to help to record a live production that is happening live is crazy. Each knob was built for a purpose to record something that is happening now, in that instance. Everything in the control room was so complex but yet so needed for live production as compared to a simple camera and mic needed for pre-taped clips. I guess you can say that the control room has machinery that is equipped to recording ‘dynamic’ time while machinery that I’m more familiar with like the simple camera and mic, is more equipped to record something more ‘static’. Lyons from the Marriot ( 2016, pg 7 ) reading speaks about this idea of ‘dynamic‘ and ‘static‘ time as dynamic being something that is happening in this instance while static being something more linear, like on a timeline – one thing happening after another. I guess seeing everything in front of me kind of shifted my perspective of how we use different machinery to record different things, if that makes any sense.
As of this moment, I’m not completely sure what pre-production planning needs to be done although from what I’ve gathered from last week’s class the only thing we can all do at the moment is to research more on our roles ( camera man to familiarise himself with the camera/how to use it etc ) and be mentally prepared for something to hit the roof- not literally of course. I absolutely have zero expectations for how the rest of the semester will turn out however i do know one thing; it’s going to be hectic as heck and i’m ready for it.
References:
Marriot S, 2016, “Time and the Live Event”, Live Television: Time, Space and the Broadcast Event, SAGE publications, London, pg 59-72.