News Programme Rehearsals (5).

In today's rehearsals, we were able to get one run through of our news show, although there were many ups and downs, and also things that we need to sort out before our actual recording date. We only had two of the VT clips, one of which was mine, and another that was David's - but not the one he wants to use for the actual show. My VT clip was rather quiet, however, as I had an issue with the volume when uploading it for the deadline, and that needs to be altered before the day. An intro/outro for the news show also still needs to be made (Connor said that he is currently working on it at home), and the others still need to create their own VT clips for us to insert them. We also decided on using the blue screen for when Steff is sitting at the desk, however we need to work on what we're going to put in the background during these parts of the show, and make sure that's ready for our final recording.

The script also confused the presenters a little bit, as sometimes they couldn't quite work out what they should have been saying, where to look, or where to sit/stand. It also didn't seem like (along with the VT clips) that it would last for twenty minutes, and so it needs to be extended before the actual day of recording. The scripts should be printed out a number of times too - not just twice, so that the vision mixer, camera operators, sound and production team can all have copies to read from and know how the show should exactly run. I was also considering, on the day, to quickly look up some news headlines from the past week in the local area and insert them into the beginning of the script as some sort of 'news just in', as this would make the programme run for slightly longer, and it would be something different to add in, instead of just the four news stories that we originally had. On the day, however, we should be able to use the auto cues, so instead of the presenters needing to keep looking down at scripts on their desk, the majority of the time they can look at the camera and read it from there, which will make things look and flow better on the day.

It also seems that things have been altered without people informing or consulting me first, so as we did a run through, I was extremely confused as instead of the two presenters introducing the show side by side on the sofa, Jemma and David wanted the vision mixer to cut back and forth between Steff sitting at a desk in front of the blue screen, and Chris standing up in front of a black curtain, which in my opinion seriously looks odd, and doesn't match a news show at all. It's difficult for the vision mixer to cut back and forth between the two when they're introducing the show like that, and the change of background/standing and sitting looks extremely strange on screen. I mentioned this to the rest of the production team, although they argued that this is how things are apparently done in normal news programmes on television and refused to consider to change it, but I seriously disagree, and then went home to do some more research on news shows and could not see any introduced in this way whatsoever.

They also seem to have differed from our original idea of the show being a casual one that's shown during the early afternoon on Saturdays, to one that's shown on primetime television like BBC News, or ITV News. I was also not made aware of this, and was left to find this out on my own devices, which is extremely bad communication as I am not aware why they could not simply inform me that they were making these decisions.

The set design has also not changed from day one, as we feel that this layout works for our news show, and that Ashley (our art director) and Josh (our lighting) knows how everything is positioned and can set it up without really needing to consult us at all. The camera operators (Rory, Lesley and Chloe) also all seem to know where their cameras should be, and what they need to do whilst we're filming.

So with the exception of the script needing to be longer, the VT clips needing to be finished and the odd looking camera cuts at the beginning of the show, the rehearsal ran somewhat smoothly, and we managed to get something of a rehearsal in, and it didn't go too badly.


For the second half of the lesson, it was Dee, Maddie and Joe's group's turn to rehearse. I was on camera one during this rehearsal, and I knew where they wanted the camera and how they wanted things to run. We managed to do a couple of run throughs that went a lot smoother than our one in the first half of the lesson, and they managed to sort out more or less what they needed to do.


After we packed up the equipment after rehearsals, we randomly chose who would be recording their final news show next week, and it ended up being Dee and Maddie's group, which gives us slightly longer to work on our own one.