Tech Rehearsal

Today we set up everything; headsets, cameras, sound mixer, everything, to rehearse with it and get to grips with our job roles exactly. 

Thanks Andrew for the pic

The first stream we did was a bit of a disaster, I keep saying "live in 10" on the headsets, when it actually starts with a VT. I need to make sure I say "VT in 10" on the live show. This resulted in the actors acting over the VT and you can hear them in the background. The VT itself was buffering a lot because it was going off the avid drive, I needed to copy them over to the computer itself. We also didn't have anyone to read George and the police officer at the end so it looks like May has multiple personalities. We also need some sort of countdown timer, our graphics designer will hopefully make one, as well as our credits, next week. The floor manager in the first 3 streams also talked throughout it rather than using hand gestures.

The second stream was a bit better, until I have just watched it back and realised there's no sound. Possibly my fault as I may have left the mic on mute on the computer, possibly the sound mixer (we didn't have a sound mixer, so we had to cue sound in ourselves), not quite sure who. It went much better as we had a George, but a reoccurring theme throughout is that the stand ins didn't know our blocking, and we had arranged our cameras/shot list around it.

The third stream did have sound, however, we lost camera 3 during the first part of the show, and couldn't get it back until afterwards. We directed around it, and did well considering. The vision mixer now knows how to do this, in case it happens during the stream. We also gained more confidence to talk to the camera ops and say what each camera should be doing, and telling them when to stop moving and to frame up. 

The fourth stream was a lot better and our best. We got camera 3 back and it went much more smoothly. The floor manager also did their hand gestures. However, acting and blocking was a huge issue, as one point, I cut to a close up of George for him to drink the potion and fall over (note that they never fell over in each stream so we didn't know when to cue VT), but it's a prolonged shot of George for no reason, and not drinking the potion.

I have asked two of the camera ops from today if they wanted to do it for the live, and they seemed available and wanting to do it.

Thanks Andrew for the pics

Just a few notes for me;

• CUT to 2 (cut to camera 2, don't say "camera")
• "VT in 30 seconds"
• Send vision mixer my shot list
• Camera 3 in my first half and the violent ending is a close up of George. In the happy ending, it's a close up of May (camera one will be a close up of Benny). In the spooky ending, it's a close up of George then a close up of Benny as soon as George is off screen.