AS LIVE PRODUCTION; REHEARSALS

As the transmission dates for Steal the Style nears closer - we have now began rehearsing in the studio. For the rehearsals, the camera crew go down and set up the cameras, we have to use duck tape to tape down the set. My role on the day is VT Operator, I sit in a room within the gallery, listen for the directors count and play the correct VT at the correct time.

What's going well?

I think the main thing going well as a VT operator, is knowing which VT will be needed when. Though the director at the time counts us in by announcing 'Standby VT' that only leaves us 5-10 seconds to make sure the right one is ready, so i personally prefer to try and listen to whats going on in the studio and follow along with the script. I always have a hard copy of the current script and i follow along as the show is being rehearsed, this makes it much easier for us as VT Operators because we can be ahead and always know when the VT is needed, even before the director counts us in. As well as this, if the director forgets to count us in because they're too busy with camera movements, we still will know when to play the VT because we will have it in the script.

Improvements?

Originally from the VT room, we could physically only hear the director and nothing from the studio floor (the show being rehearsed) so it made it very difficult for us to follow along with the script. However we asked one of the technicians at Maidstone Studios if they would be able to patch the audio in from the studio floor, they managed to do this and it now makes it much easier for us to follow along with the script and always, as i said, make sure to play the correct VTs. 

I think the main struggle with this, is not knowing how to use all of the software on the the computer. Some of the clips we have used aren't in the correct form to be loaded onto 'Black-magic' (the programme we use to play the VTs). In order to fix this we have to run the clips through another programme called 'Resolve', this programme is a lot more complicated, we seemed to be getting the hang of it but with a two week break I'm not too sure how much we will know - i have taken a few notes from what we taught so hopefully these will help us.

Overall, i think the rehearsals seem to be going very well from all aspects and i think we will be fully prepared by the transmission date. The only thing that seemed to be a little bit more complicated from my perspective of VT Operator, is that we also have to record the whole show, a box will be put into the VT room and we have to make sure it is recording the whole show. Also, we have to make sure we play all of the 5 second stings at the correct time too, this isn't too difficult but its more about making sure they're ready to be played because some are played very close to or before the start of a VT.