Studio Production: 1st Studio Workshops with Del




1ST STUDIO WORKSHOP

The aim of this lesson was to have a general play around with the equipment on the studio floor as well as vision mixing in the gallery.

FIRST HALF
Our first task was to learn the possible camera movements that may be asked of us if we were on cameras. We had small groups within this and took turns with being subjects. Being on camera and trying to focus on the subject whilst they move around proved to be much more of a challenge than originally anticipated. the challenge was that you had to follow the movement but also continuously have them in the right framing. Its as if you had to predict the movement so there was a lot of things to consider just for one shot. This was also the first time that I picked up one of the EX's in a long time so the movements felt a bit foreign to me. But after a little practice, I was able to get a better shots. 

I really enjoyed this part of the session as it allowed me to see a fraction of what I can expect for the real show. But it also highlighted how much practice I would need to do for the show a I was still a bit rusty.


SECOND HALF

This is where the whole class went into the gallery and Del brought out practice scripts from real previous shows for us to look at and learn how to cut to them. 

This for me was a real eye opener because firstly the scripts were so foreign to me, they had lots of new abbreviated terminology in places that I was not familiar with so as a class we all went through and tried to guess what those directions meant. After this, it became much more clearer. Another important element from this was learning the timings of a script which cuts to music.

  • a bar is 4 counts
  • count "1,2,3,4...2,2,3,4...3,2,3,4" when the instruction calls for more that 2 bars. This helps you stay on track for how long you have been counting for. 
  • when cutting on the last count of that bar you must allow it to go for the full second and not cut it too early otherwise you would be out of sync
At first I found this challenging because you have to multitask and do two things at once. You must keep counting the bars accurately as well as as cutting at the right time. It is so easy to cut early and mess up. On my first try I struggled but after a while I was able to get the hang of it. It was slyly a rush so I enjoyed it. 

What have I learnt;
  • I learnt how to appreciate the vision mixers job much more because the amount of pressure that I felt whilst trying to correctly get my cuts was a lot. Del told us about his colleagues who would sometimes have over 30 cameras to cut between and it sounded impossible. Vision Mixing is a skill that I one day hope to learn.


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