TV Show: Context

For the fourth assignment this year, we have been tasked with creating our own Live TV Show pilot episode. We have been advised to have it be no more than a half hour production, which by industry really means around 28 minutes, and within this show there must be live and pre recorded sections. This was a very exciting brief to me as it was completely different from what we have done before. Although I don’t see myself going down the TV route in the future, it will be very beneficial to have crafts in this area as a lot of broadcasting skills come from places of teamwork and ways to minimise stress in a pressured environment. Initially, as this is a second group assignment, I knew I didn’t want to take the directing position again as I wanted to vary my placement in the group and gain a new set of skills. For me, the first major shift from the previous assignment that had me worried was the fact that we are now in much larger groups, having jumped from a 5 to 10. I soon realised that with a live production on the day it will be very good to have this many people. However, lots of people can cause problems and conflicts of opinions in the early stages.

In my group this time, there’s Vi, Alex, Jess, Tilly, Korben, Michael, Felix, Fin and Evie. We divided up roles, realising there is a lot to cover, and in doing so realised everyone needed a production job and a job in the studio on the day. In my case, I will be doing all the graphics for the show, including a title sequence, lower thirds, credits and logos for the screen. I will also assist Alex in editing when it comes to preparing the pre recorded sections. On the day, my job will shift to vision mixing in the gallery. As a result, I must do necessary research for both of these jobs and am available if anyone else in the group needs another pair of hands.

Once we had figured out who was in our group, we got to brainstorming so we could hone in on what kind of show we wanted to run. I believe I worked well with the group to try and make sure everyone who had an idea’s voice was heard. Eventually, we landed on creating a court room case in the style of something like Judge Rinder or Jeremy Kyle. For our pre recorded element, we want to make a series of adverts that intertwine with the court room, starring the same cast and having promoted items appear in the court. The adverts will revolve around a shady company that sponsors the court room and their adverts will become more questionable and frequent over time. As we have a lot of adverts planned, it may end up that everyone gets to direct one so that we all get a similar level of experience from it. The show overall will follow a format like the comedy sketch show SNL, with the courtroom being the feature for this episode. This means that there are many components to research due to the layers of the show. In my case, I wasn't initially onboard with the courtroom as it requires a really strong script that will carry through the show. However, I have faith in my group to create that with the necessary research. I was the person who inputted the SNL idea as we wanted to keep it a bit more interesting and fit a younger target audience. This is an ambitious idea for a pilot episode but I believe we need to push the boundaries to really test our strengths in these assignments.