Video production homework

At the start of our session we had a group discussion on what stories we should introduce to our news report that will be read out by the two members of the group who were nominated the talent and presenters. We also talked about the relevance and who the talent could elaborate on these stories.

Roles:

·         Floor manager- The floor manager job is an overall job that checks and makes sure equipment is set up correctly. They assist in planning and prepping areas such as sound, cameras and editing crew are ready to go. When all is set from the editing and recording room the floor manager counts the talent which is the people in front of the camera in our project it was news reporters. Once the count them in and they begin they assist in background rolls such as telling them what camera to look at and when the talent have finished and are wrapping up they will go and tell the editing crew to stop recording.

·         Sound engineer- The sound engineer is in charge of all recordings and sound volume on set. First of all this is started by adding and putting mics on or with the talent. Then they will do a check and make sure all voices our clear by doing basic testing skills such as counting to five. Also after or during this process they must get all the sounds and voices are projected correctly on the editing software (Tricaster) using the sound mixer.

·         Vision mixer- The vision mixer edits the output of the camera live, such as adding text and pictures when necessary. But not everything done by the vision mixer is live. During the pre recording which is before the recording they will create or prepare a background or any other special effect to fade in or set for when the recording is taking place.

·         Director- the Director delegates other job roles and organizes what happens. They control and know everything that is going on and off set. The main focus is getting the talent to do their part correctly. For example for our newsroom our director was giving the talent information and sources to read out. Also they make sure everything is in check and go before the recording starts. This is then all confirmed by both the director and floor manager and recording starts. During the recording the manager will look out for faults and be on the case straight away if so. During the post recording time which is when recordings is finished the manager will decide if it works and whether or not the recording will have to be done again.

·         Presenter- On set the presenter is also known as talent. The talent is the members in front of the screen and although most of their information and what they need to do comes from the okay of the director. They also need to talk to other staff and members of the production team to understand full on the recording. They will perform to the best of their ability and they will make be in front of the camera acting or reporting.

·         Production editor- The production editor controls editing and make sure everything such as fade in’s and fade out’s are on time during the recording. They are also the member of the crew who initiates the recording and starts it and then either the production assistant or editor will tell the floor manager to start the countdown. They edit on a computer using good software or in our production team case we used a tricaster which is an editor and a mixer. They also then publish the work that’s been carried out live and maybe add anything if needed.

·         Production assistant- The production assistant is the helper of the production editor. They do the same job really but just giving a helping hand and doing small jobs such as communicating between production editor and floor manager or swapping cameras using editing tools, hardware or software.

·         Camera men/women- The camera men control the angle and position of the camera. Not only have they that they deal with effects such as focused, brightness and saturation.

I think overall as a group to improve we could all improve on communications. As debate occurred and some thoughts where pushed to a side that maybe we should of kept in. We could have also maybe got timings of things better such as fades on the editing crew and speech and clearness from the talent but as a group I thought we done really well for our first time of real a practice test.