TVP1240 Studio Production Reflective Analysis
In the past seven months, I was involved in six separate productions in the TVP1240 course.
For the first production „The headline” I was a researcher and I composed music theme, For the second production „Friday Night Jam” I was a sound engineer during the „Mdx Now” as well as „Get plugged” I was a lighting assistant. For a production „Harry Potter Live” I was a lighting director, ” and finally in „The art room” my role was camera supervisor. I feel that I have developed as a student and as a member of the team, working on these productions. I will outline how I created, changed and developed my work during the course, taking into account feedback and referring to texts from which I drew inspiration and guidance from. After the first year, I realized that the key elements that make the production go smoothly are teamwork, reliability, time management and communication within the team and I will reflect on them.
To begin with according to Robbins and Finley team is a group of individuals working together to achieve a common goal through collaborative decision-making. Teamwork is also designed to encourage flexibility, versatility, quick thinking, and multi-tasking. It motivates workers by rotating job assignments and by involving each team member in the decisions about how those assignments are rotated (Morrison, 1998). During our productions, one of the biggest obstacles was the inability to work as a team. Unclear instructions and miscommunications were the cause of many problems. Thanks to the lectures we knew about every role in theory but only after taking part in the productions I fully understood how it works in practice. Because of the lack of communication within departments, many of us didn’t know what their role is. In that case, if one of the team members is unsure exactly what is required of them, they are likely to not complete the task. It happened when in lighting department on the production „Harry Potter Live”. Because the lighting plan was too complex and challenging in terms of time during the rigging it was mostly me positioning the lights. This led to many misunderstanding between me and lighting assistants when I was asking them to tweak or change the positions of the lights while I was up in the gallery.
As a lighting director working on „Harry Potter Live” I liaised with the set designer to plan the positions of the studio lights in advance of the studio day. During the studio day, I controlled lighting changes and work with the lighting team on the floor. When I was working on the lighting plan I kept in mind what Lighting director Jonathan Harrison (Broadcast, May 2004) said: ‘Lighting cameramen should try to diminish the depth of field and create layers using light and props, and the considered positioning of your subject. The key is to make your audience focus on the subject of importance in the frame.’ Think about your background and perspective and what you’ll focus on. Decide in advance on camera positions and what lights you’ll use.’ According to Patricia Holland to create a strong lighting plan information like the subject, the type and position of the cameras and the general layout of the studio are needed. Based on this facts a lighting technician can create a lighting plot in our case it was based on the three-point lighting system. When it came to rehearsal I paid attention to the monitors to check for lighting defects. These defects can include issues with shadows, poor contrast, areas that are too dark or too bright and other kinds of interference. In our production, I think I failed as a lighting director because even though the vision of the director was too ambitious I could have disagreed with some of the ideas. The main problem was that the presenters were meant to be different and after a sudden change, all of the lights were badly positioned. After this production, I also learned how vital is to have time for adjusting the lights with talents because elements like skin tone, the color of the clothes, hight and even hair affect the overall look. Now looking back I know what I’d have changed and done differently. That leads me to another thing I’ve learned about how benefiting from the experience is important. After this production I think is necessary to arrange a post-project meeting with the production team, at a time convenient to everyone and in a calm, quiet place. It's important to take turns to say about the everybody’s feelings about the project, but without using words like ‘blame’ and ‘fault’, or to express judgments about another person’s behavior because it only leads to another argument.
After being a part of the „Get Plugged” I realized how being honest and reliable is vital in every project. As a result of circumstances for which the producer was not always responsible for, the number of performers was changing constantly. We spend a day on rigging lights for the whole band and on the day of production turned out that we need lights only for a solo artist. This situation happened because of no information flow and effected on relations within the team.
We decided to keep some of the light in their original positions and focus the rest on the vocalist. By cause of that, the mood of the lighting changed slightly but we managed to keep it in the concept of the show. Thanks to that I learned how to quickly adapt to a new situation and how to overcome this kind of obstacles. Whenever a group of people works toward a common goal, conflict is likely to arise at one time or another. According to Anne Kinsley whether a conflict is due to unfair expectations, irresponsibility or plain misunderstanding, good team communication skills let everyone have a voice and feel heard. When it is safe to express thoughts clearly, honestly and tactfully, it is easier to move forward with a solution that has everyone's best interest at heart. Once on the other side of a conflict, a team with good communication skills may even feel stronger for overcoming the hurdle.
Being Camera supervisor taught me how vital is to know the script well and to plan every shot in terms of positioning the cameras. In our production, we struggled with the concept of the show. The size of the puppet definitely limited our variety of the shots. To diversify them I should have suggested the director rehearse entrance of the puppet from different positions. Furthermore, I would change the shots within the cameras, because of cross shooting sometimes the puppet was covered by the presenter’s hands so there is a chance that we’d have avoided it by switching the shots between camera 1 and 3. As an inexperienced camera operator I was scared to make those changes and now I know that I should have consulted this with my director. Another thing that I’ve learned was to check the Program (PGM) Button to check what shot is currently live so that I can offer the director a different one. After this Production, I agree with Utterback phrase that
Camera operator will need to be flexible – able to capture/acquire professional-quality images.
These are the things that I have worked on and improved over the past year and I feel that my work shows this. What I’ve learned thanks to this module is flexibility and willingness to adapt, I became better in quick thinking and the gained ability to take direction and finally, I realized that in the studio it’s essential to be proactive and have initiative. I know that for example my ability to make a lighting plan and knowledge about light has grown stronger this year. There are a couple of things that I do feel I lack the confidence and skill to perform and that is what I hope to gain next year. Personally, I think that next year I really need to work on time management especially during preproduction because like John Smith multi-camera director on Weakest Link said: "At least 75% of the work is done before you sit in front of the monitors."