12 Dec Critical explication – Juliana Onetti
JLDN YouTube live show broadcast on 15/11/2019
I have chosen the YouTube show broadcast on November 15, 2019, as the subject for my critical explication. During the week of the creation of this show my roles were camera person in my VT group, and then floor manager on the day of the programme.
I decided to talk about this specific live show because I learned a lot during the process of making it. I am going to raise three key points; my contribution to the show, the good parts of this programme, and finally the bad parts of it and how they could be improved.
At the beginning of the week, I produced a video package with my VT group. On Monday morning meeting, Vanessa told us that this week’s show will be focused on the LGBTQ+ community, so the subject we chose to cover was the mental health issues that can affect LGBTQ+ people.
After choosing the subject of the VT, we attributed the roles we will have in the group, this week I was the camera person. I had to book the equipment, which includes the camera Canon XF100, the different microphones and the tripod. I had to play with it to get more familiar, as it was my first time using this camera.
Then, on Tuesday I went to the location to film with Seyi, the presenter. Unfortunately, we had more difficulties than we thought. We planned to get an interview with someone from the well-being or mental health team at LSBU student centre, but nobody was available. They told us to book an appointment with them to get an interview, but the only time they could be available to talk to us was the week after, which was too late for us.
We continued filming and after spending the whole afternoon asking people if they could answer one short question for our Vox pops, we managed to get three. It was a lot harder than we thought because people do not know a lot about mental health, and the LGBTQ+ community in general, so they refused to answer questions about the subject…
Thinking back about it, I think that to find Vox pops more easily we should have contacted an LGBTQ+ society, went at the entrance of a Gay pub or club and ask people that are targeted by the subject. But usually what works best for Vox pops are public opinion questions, where everybody can have a say, for example, big topics such as Brexit, TFL fares and things like that.
To conclude, the VT was not as good as it could have been, but I don’t think it was bad. We still managed to get some good shots, which were relevant to the story. For example, we had nice LGBTQ+ posters and flyers, general views of LSBU student centre and all the footage were well framed and focused.
Then, on the day of the show, my role was floor manager, which consists of placing the cameras, moving the tables, rigging the studio set, telling people where they have to stand during the live show and welcoming the possible guests by making them feel at ease.
I worked along with Arun, who was in charge of the lighting and Kika, the Vision Mixer director. I think we were a great team and I enjoyed working with them because we were all listening to what the others had to say and the advice they would give. I think that listening and communicating with your co-workers is the key to have a great team. You need to know that you can rely on the people you work with.
Working with Arun and Kika was perfect for me because we all were on the same level, our main goal was to improve the live show.
To do so we started by talking about what could be improved from the previous weeks and the main points we all had were the lighting and the bulletins set up.
According to me, the best improvements of this live show and the things I am the proudest of are without any hesitation the lighting, the bulletins set up and the decoration. To be able to improve all of that we started early in the morning, right after the editorial meeting and I think that is the reason why we had enough time to achieve all of that.
First, we started by setting up the cameras and the lights, with the help of Matt and Steph, who taught us how to add gels on the lights to get rid of glare and make the lighting more gentle.
After finishing with lights on the sofa and social media areas, we tried our best to make the bulletins set up look better because the weeks before the lighting was awful in the area… To do so, we tried to add more lighting by putting standing lights, but it was still not enough. So we started thinking about other ideas, maybe moving the set up to another location in the room?
Then, we thought about the Green Screen, we had never used it before so we asked Matt if he could help us set it up. It was really fun to play with it, and we figured out that we can do a lot with it. So we decided to give Mahira, the bulletins presenter, a virtual news desk, which looked very good, LJ even congratulated us for that.
Once all the cameras and lighting were fixed, we concentrated on the sofa area to add a little bit more decorations. This week we got new pillows, plants, and lamps, so we could get creative. I think in the end it looked really good on camera, especially thanks to the plants which gave more life to the set.
On the technical side, I can not say that much because I was not working on the mixing desk this week, but overall I think this live show was a big improvement for the class. It was only our eighth week of the second year and I think we did some good progress to that point. The show started to look more professional, we had good VT packages, the sound levels were adjusted and the addition of the green screen was a major improvement.
I also wanted to point out the parts of this programme that could be improved. The first point is the black curtain which was behind the sofa, I think we should get rid of it and turn the sofas the other way around, to be able to see the newsroom behind the presenters. We should also put tables with people working, to add more life to the background, which is better than a plain one.
Then on the technical side, I think that more improvements can still be made on the sound, overall it was good but some microphones did not work perfectly. I think the framing of the cameras can also be improved, especially the sofa presenters’ one, which did not look perfectly straight. And finally, as Vanessa told us in the feedback there should be more interaction between the presenters.
Overall, the things that I keep in mind about the making of this live show are the importance of planning, starting to get things done as soon as possible and not letting it for the last minute, and finally the importance of communication in a team. I appreciated my two roles during this week, and I learned a lot either as a camera person or as a floor manager. I am looking forward to improving and learn even more.
