Week 1 - Interviews

Set reading: ‘The New Television Handbook’

Holland, P. (2017) The New Television Handbook. Taylor and Francis Group, Chapter 9-12.

The lecture was based around introducing us to the new module, discussing the reading and the roles involved in creating interviews for live TV in the studio. The main focus was the first task known as the interview and the different styles in which interviews can be done. There were two different interview methods, known as the “Stand Upper” and the “Sit Down”. Both interviews had to be done with first single camera and then multi camera and that there would need to be a lot of attention on timings and how many people are included in the interviews. We would also need to focus on who the subjects of the interview would be such as having an interviewer and an interviewee would be known as a 1+1 and then adding another interviewee would be known as a 1+2 and then a 1+3 etc. 

Practical Task- Interviews

Practical:

As this was the first task I was quite nervous about working in the studio as it’s something I’d never done before, especially taking on roles within the space such as sound, lighting etc. and having to work as a team with others in a short space of time.
The first thing that the group had to decide was who was going to undertake each of the roles in the tasks. We had three different interviews that we needed to create and so everyone would have three roles. Within the group my three roles were Communications with Camera, Acting and Sound. I had never done any of these things before in a studio context and I felt the first task was a great opportunity to get to grips with the different jobs. In the first interview which was a “Stand Upper” and a 1+1, my role was known as “Comms” which was essentially communications with the camera operators. 
I felt that in this role, there wasn’t a lot to do as I was only ever needed if the director wanted to discuss shots with the camera operators or tell them to do something specific such as zooming and focus and since in the first interview this wasn’t really necessary, I only occasionally had to interact with the camera operators. I liked the relationship between the Communications Operator and the Director as it was important to be clear with each other. The role taught me in a way how to deal with the pressure of relaying information between people, which is necessary to keep everything running smoothly. 

The next interview task we did was still a “Stand Upper” but a 1+2 interview. In this interview my role was acting. I found that in this role, even though it wasn’t really a role within the studio’s operation, it was still an important role to try as it gave me an understanding of how you deal with an interviewee when they are in the studio and the set-up process of mic’s, interacting with the interviewer and floor manager. 

The last interview was a 1+3. In this interview my role was working on Sound. This is something I had never done before and I really enjoyed learning about the role and how recording sound actually works. This role had a bit more responsibility to it and I had to control checking who was using which microphones and doing tests for voice levels. When we were going live and doing takes, it was my job to make sure that the voice levels were the same throughout using the master controls and individual sliders. Similar to the other roles, I experienced interacting with the team and working together to get things done as quickly as possible. 

Throughout the entire process of making the interviews, there was a lot of pressure to make sure that each of the interviews were completed in the two-hour time slot and also taking on these new roles that some people had never done before, so I think that myself and the group did well to adapt to these new surroundings.