10th January Assessment

Tuesday 10th January was our first day that we were assessed on our performances during a music video shoot. We all arrived onto the location on time and not long after the equipment had arrived as well. After unloading the van and putting all the kit in the studio we began to set up the cameras, track and all the equipment which had to go into the gallery. It took us around an hour to set up the equipment including the tri-caster and audio mixer and after that we waited on the sound operators for the music students to arrive. During that time we ran through some rehearsals with the presenters and had some of the crew jump in and act as the music students.

I was on sound for the first act so it was up to me to initially set up the audio mixer for the rest of the day. Before the acts began we all went on a dinner break and at that time i had the sound working fine. After lunch when I returned I had to work with the music students in order to ensure that the audio was running from their mixer into our audio mixer. After they had completed their set up I was having some issues because I couldn't hear any music and I was having difficulties solving the problem. The problem took a while solving but after that we began to go through the set up and solved the issue.

After the first act had finished they were escorted downstairs to do their interview. It took longer than it should have to take the performers downstairs or their interviews and we were waiting a while on the vision and audio mixers. After the first act I muted the microphones upstairs and waited for the interview while the graphics played on the screen. Once the performers got into the interview room I turned up the microphone volume and began mixing the interview. After the interview we faded to black, turned down the volume and began setting up for the next act.

I didn't have a job for the next two act so my role was to help others set up and also help the presenters in the other room for their introductions and interviews. After the initial set up we were very quick on getting ready, filming and interviewing. It's confusing how everything works when you use it but then the very next day you have issues using the equipment.

For the next act I was on camera one which was stationed to the left. It was a little different to when we were at Fielden campus because the stage was a couple of feet above the ground. We had to compensate by lifting the cameras higher than usual and we worked in darkness for the sake of the music video.

As a camera operator I worked closely with the director (Nyasha). It's important to listen to the director and try to give him what he wants. He asked us to offer him shots which is good for a camera operator to hear because it helped me be creative. Also because our microphones on the headsets didn't work we had to communicate with the director through the floor manager when the director was downstairs.

On the last shoot I had no job role so I once again decided to help out downstairs in the interview room either being a floor manager or filming the interview. I wanted to have it handheld but the director decided to have it on a tripod which I believe didn't give it a backstage feeling.