Preparation for our first ever live show was a whirlwind of confusion, which is to be expected when every crew member is learning on the go. Not only were you learning your own role, but you were learning how it functioned in relation to everyone else, and how all the tech in the studio functioned as well. Learning EVS from the ground up occupied the few weeks that it took for the writers producers and directors, everyone who had a heavy hand in the pre-production stage of things, to come up with a game plan. I spent the lessons tinkering with the EVS machine, practicing pulling up clips, moving them to different banks, and trying to put them into playlists to maximise efficiency. The other thing I spent my time learning, which I believe was even more important, was troubleshooting. There were several times during those lessons that I would press the wrong button, and suddenly the EVS was unresponsive, or doing something completely unexpected, and I would have to wait the few minutes until a tech could come and fix it. However I knew that during a live production, those few minutes could be disastrous and I was determined to learn how to fix my mistakes so that if anything went wrong during the live show I would be able to get things up and running as soon as possible. As early as week four we started talking about risk management strategies when it came to live television, the reading on Scannel prompting us to think about these things, as “The demonic problem of live speech-act-events on radio and television is the ever present possibility of their breakdown, either through technical error or human performance failure. Damage limitation is a cardinal consideration in the management care- structures of live-to-air talk and events on radio and television.” (Scannell 98). There are things we can do to minimise this risk, such as having a ‘Sorry, Somethings Gone Wrong’ graphic ready to go, and my part in limiting the possible damage was learning common troubleshooting techniques for EVS. In class we talked a lot about the dangers of things going wrong in live television, looking at examples such as the slip up in announcing the winners for Australia’s Next Top Model in 2010, and while the possibility of blunders like that are what live television is all about, and can even be positive in a way, entertaining the audience, generating buzz and press around a show and making sure people tune in incase it happens again, the key in all successful managements of live mistakes in my opinion is that they are repaired or recovered from quickly. The initial shock can be entertaining for the audience, but the show must go on.

To be 100% honest, I was expecting more mistakes in both episodes of Midnight Snack, especially since most people were switching roles in between episodes so there was less room for improving across the course of the two. However, something that has held true for me across multiple stage productions held true here as well and a terrible rehearsal led to a great show. Over four hours of rehearsal meant that lots of little mistakes got caught and rectified before we even went to air, and it revealed to me a lot more of the trials and limitations of working in television than I’d thought of during our free practice during the last weeks classes. For instance, I’d been training on EVS and learning how to put clips into a playlist, thinking that having all of them on the same button ready to play one after the other would be far more convenient, however in rehearsal when we had to redo a segment, something went wrong or I accidentally pressed the button one too many times, what this actually meant was that I had to cycle through all the clips to get back to the one I wanted, holding up the rehearsal or throwing off the timing. It was one of many issues that only revealed themselves to us through rehearsal, but by the time the show came around, we were ready for those issues and could correct them, in my case by putting all the clips into separate buttons. During the actual show we had minimal issues, and I’m sorry to say I probably could have avoided some of them, such as the crackly mike in Studio C during episode 1. I have been acting as an audio assistant for the RMITV production Quiz Night and I knew that one of the lapel mikes had audio issues, but when that particular mike gave us issues during rehearsal I assumed audio would take care of it. In a production where everyone was learning as they went it becomes even more important to lend a hand. When you always assume someone else will take care of it, things start to slip through the cracks.

On a production like this one it does become necessary to not only be aware of your own role, but the responsibilities and capabilities of those around you, especially for those in charge of the overall production like writers, directors and producers. Having a general idea of what each role needs to do before going live can help producers set adequate call times, and by knowing the capabilities of the people they work with, the writers and directors can demand the best from them without asking for things that are impossible or outside their limits. As EVS their were some things I couldn’t control, such as the volume of my clips, and during rehearsals for episode two this was something that the director asked me to change. I then had to pass along her instructions to audio and it became a bit of a Chinese Whispers scenario before we were able to streamline it and make sure the correct message was getting across. Communication was so very important in the control room, and I remember clearly during rehearsals for episode two a period of complete confusion trying to organise when we would fade out the audio for the intro, as when the director said she wanted in faded from 10 seconds, I thought she wanted it from 10 seconds in, and she meant she wanted it faded with 10 seconds to go. Then, passing it along to audio there was more confusion on whether it needed to be completely faded by 10 seconds, or start fading it out from 10 seconds. The whole debacle took much longer than it needed to and really illustrated to me the need to be completely clear and concise in the control room and not assume people mean the same things as you.

Going live for the first time was the most nerve wracking thing I’ve done since my last high school production, for a lot of the same reasons. Being the EVS operator for studio C, I only had two clips to play, and I’d rehearsed throwing that lever for hours and hours before hand, and yet I had just as much butterflies in my stomach as when I had to stand on stage and deliver lines, not even knowing if we even had people watching. I can say for certain that Scannel hit the nail on the head when saying ‘Anxiety and desire (one to hopefully overcome; the other hopefully to be realised) are twin underlying concerns in the management of liveness’. The anxiety of the live performance was palpable, and yet the adrenaline made everything so much more heightened. During episode 2 there were several EVS changes to be made last minute, and I had to move my clips from one button onto multiple banks, which is a relatively simple task. And yet knowing that there was that time limit waiting for me, that if I wasn’t ready by 7.30 it wasn’t just a case of taking another couple minutes, that we would be going live, made the task a lot more daunting, but more rewarding when it was completed.

During the semester week three was completely dedicated to looking at the live studio audience and the laugh track (blog post about it here) and after having been part of a production with a live audience I completely understand why Giotta described them as ‘dangerously unpredictable’. While they can bolster the confidence of any guests or hosts through laughter and applause at appropriate moments, they can simultaneously tear it down if the aforementioned doesn’t come. Patrick Marrinan, our guest for episode two, was obviously put off by the lack of laughter to some comments, going so far as to point it out, and asking the host ‘Sorry, am I ruining the show?’, which I believe threw off the rhythm of the interview, as well as wasting time, which is a major concern in productions like these. There were also pitfalls in trying to control the audience too much, such as when a segment which was meant to go like this:

Nicole: And I’m your other host Nicole and tonight is the second and unfortunately last episode of Midnight Snack!

Audience: Boooo

Ended up going like this:

Nicole: And I’m your other host Nicole..

Audience: Boo!

Which did considerably throw off her rhythm, and fair enough.

The whole experience of putting together a live show from conception to production really illuminated the truths in the readings we’ve been looking at all semester, and highlighted the unpredictability of it all. On Thursday night I would be doing Midnight Snack and on Friday Nights I would be doing Quiz Night, which is prerecorded and edited throughout the week, and the differences are staggering. Live television requires so much more from you, more rehearsal, more alertness, more skill and this show has really driven that home.