5th March 2013 – Today I finally got to experience what it was like to be in a TV studio and I was not disappointed. At first I was worried that I wouldn’t get the hand of any equipment in the studio just because of what I previously knew about television production and just the volume of wires involved in the process was mind boggling. As the session progressed I gradually became confident about being in the TV studio and using the equipment in there. My group was giving the task to create a TV program that incorporated Spontaneity, which I felt might be trouble compared to what other groups were tasked with.

19th March 2013 – We chose our roles today and I have to say I am disappointed that I didn’t get the role I wanted, but I’m going to stay optimistic and try to be the best Researcher I can be. I really wanted to be a Camera operator but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. Sigh.

3rd May 2013 – FINALLY. After feeling sidelined and not really inputting at all in my role as researcher I was thrown a bone and the director asked me to be on Camera three due to the fact that the previous camera operator for that camera wasn’t showing up for important sessions and obviously you need to have a camera operator for all cameras. This change has prompted me to get involved with the production, I feel apart of the team now so that’s good. Usually when I came into the studio I would sit around not doing anything at all because of what my role meant, not anymore!

9th May 2013 – Unfortunately our TV studio session was marred by absences and our presenter injured herself the night before so we had to struggle with a member of the team who had no experience of presenting and she did quite considering she never practiced presenting at all so hats off to her. But, that’s not her role so in terms of personal development it was pointless and with the live recording session so close it was imperative to have everyone in their roles. Another issue was one of our runners showed up late to the session and we actually needed more than one runner as the amount of things that needed doing was just growing. She was late because she overslept after being on a night out, to be honest I was going to go out that night too but after getting my role changed to something where I’m actually needed in studio I decided against it. The runner then said she does “Nothing” in the studio session so wasn’t too fussed about the sessions, which I can sympathize with because up until a week ago I felt the same and just get involved in anything. My morale was low. In the less sought after roles in the TV studio you can really feel sidelined and unimportant if you are not kept busy which will result in you switching off and not really being bothered, so I understand.

13th May 2013 – The last session before the live session and it dawned on me that there is no room for mistakes during the live sessions, we do get three chances to record a program, but that isn’t the point, every take should be better than the last. I have settled into my new role very well and I am doing the best I can. The amount of run-throughs we did was limited because of how long it took for us to set everything up. We all said that it should take us thirty minutes to set up everything but it took us almost an hour. This wasn’t good as the live session would only last two hours so on that basis we would only have one hour to record our twelve minute program three times, tight squeeze. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

14th May 2013 – We are live! Yesterday we all agreed to arrive at Uni at 12pm and meet in the basement to go over the run-through and iron out any issues we might have with the show. We just talked about our VT’s made sure we had them and happy with them, talked about the setting up process. Our floor manager came up with the notion that all those stationed in the gallery stay in the gallery and set up their allocated equipment ready for recording and all those stationed in studio and runners stay in the studio stay in there and help set up the set as we will need more people to build the set. This was very clever as yesterday one of the reasons it took so long for us to set up the studio was because people kept going back and forth between the gallery and studio. 3pm-5pm. For two hours I was focused on producing a twelve-minute program. We got in the studio and a instantly discovered a problem with the focus of my camera. For long-shots it wouldn’t focus but for close-ups it would focus. I thought I fixed this problem but I didn’t, as I harshly found out during a live recording when the camera wouldn’t focus. That meant for the live performance I had to resort to a close-up of the main performer, which was disappointing, as I wanted to cut to different angles. Overall I think the recording went great, I‘m very happy with end product minus a few minor glitches, but for our first time doing something of that magnitude the final product was tremendous.