My Roles

17/01/12

My roles on this day were as follows:

Performance 2 - Camera 1

  The second act of the day was Yu Min Kang, a long with Andrew Tarling on backing vocals, she performed 'Until I See You Again'. For this act I was assigned to Camera 1, which was the camera on the far left side of the studio floor, with Yu Min Kang closest and Andrew Tarling on the other side.
  I enjoyed this role a lot, and feel that I offered up a variety of shots to the directing and vision mixing team of Andrew Greenland and Rebecca Quarmby, respectively. As the perfomance was relatively sedated and rather static throughout, there wasn't a lot to offer in up in terms of action shots, but it gave us as a team, time to be more creative with our output, for instance, I tried to offer Andrew a couple of shots that moved in and out of focus, among other things, but the main shot he seemed to like that I gave him was a sort of close-up of Yu Min playing keyboard and moving in and round that area.

Performance 4 - Sound

  Next up, it was my turn to take on the role of the sound mixer. For this, I would be working from the gallery, right next to the director and the vision mixer (Jack & Kassem). The act that was performing during this were Charlie Cheesecake & the Corned Beef Inspectors, a three-piece consiting of Andrew Tarling, Elliot Beese and Mike Devaney.
  With never having done the sound mixing properly in a practice session - or otherwise - before this, it was safe to say I was fairly apprehensive when I found out it would be the role I would be taking up at some point in the day. However, during the third act, I was able to stay in the gallery and watch over Imogen as she did this role just before me, so I was able to take note and ask her some questions about it afterwards. With Imogen's input, I felt I was equipped and ready to perform the role to a good standard.
  With the act I was mixing being a full band, as opposed to Yu Min Kang on acoustic guitar, which is what Imogen took care of, I was wary of the fact that some of the settings may have had to have been toned down somewhat. The green room interview ended, and the performance began so I raised the dials, but it quickly became apparent that my caution was too heavy handed and the sound output was far too low, I reacted as quickly as I could to improve the sound and thankfully was able to fix the problem, keeping everything pretty well mixed from then on, despite the early hiccup.

Performance 5 - Camera 4

  During this performance I had to take charge of Camera 4, which is the camera used in the green room where the post-performance interviews take place, with this camera not coming equipped with a tripod I had to use it as a standalone instrument, I went with the technique of harbouring it on my shoulder to film the interviews, which let me keep the camera quite static and left me able to capture the interview more or less as though I was using a tripod, but still granted me that kind of gonzo feel, and the option to move around freely during the interview.
 
Performance 7 - Online

  For what should of been the final performance of the day, I was assigned to do the online broadcasting, so I was in charge of the UStream and making sure the production itself was properly broadcast, on the Manchester College UStream site.
  This role was another one I hadn't really had much experience in, something I had only really seen people do, or watch Colin do from the practice sessions. All that was required really was to know when to stop the broadcast in order to save what had been filmed, name it and then save it, in order to start recording the next section which would be the interview, if this was done properly, then the role is pretty much done with.
 The event was broadcast without any real problems, and I was quite happy with my individual input during this performance, however, although I had recorded the broadcast, it was unfortunately not captured on the tri-caster which meant the only version of the performance was a slightly pixelated copy that I had recorded from the live stream.