'Late Nights With Lou', Our talk show

Editing Screenshot

Evaluation

Research & Pre production

For this unit, we had the option to either create a news broadcast or a talk show. Me, and my group decided to create a talk show because we felt that we would have more creative freedom with it and wouldn't have to conform to a news broadcast structure. After discussing the unit we all mutually agreed on the idea of a comedy style late night talk show. We were heavily inspired by shows like Alan Carr Chatty man and The Late Night Show with Jimmy Fallon and wanted to replicate their structure and use the typical late night talk show conventions (having a musical performance, playing games, a host entertaining guests with their personality and charisma). I watched many talk show clips as part of my research to see what made a good talk show and to find out what i wanted to incorporate into our script. It was all down to the way talk show hosts interact with their guests and a hosts personality which essentially carries the tone and energy of the show. For example the way Alan Carr offers his guests a drink and makes them feel comfortable while being himself, or how all hosts make scripted guest interview questions spontaneous and casual. Using these influences we made sure to make the script funny by making the host very witty and charismatic, making sure to add in jokes. The humour and personality of the host did end up creating a very comedic and lighthearted show. We also had the idea of offering the guest a drink to tie into the comfort aspect of a talk show and making a guest feel welcome.

We were also instructed to make our shows interactive, so i influenced the show having a game during the celebrity interview, to show interaction between the guest and host, taking inspiration from Jimmy Fallon who generates millions of views online with viral videos of celebrities playing games with him. We also decided on having a cooking segment and a musical guest performance which would interact with our audience by meeting their needs for escapism and encouraging the audience to be more active in what they are watching with the host directly speaking to the camera. Which leads me onto my audience reserach, i conducted a survey were my objective was to see what opinions my genration had on talk shows. The survey I conducted was small with only 11 responses, so it can be interpreted as a small focus group survey. My findings for this survey were that the majority of younger age demographics are non linear viewers with focuses on short form content and convenience. I made a link between interactivity and comedy being fundamental to a talk shows success online and its overall enjoyability. Which is why Jimmy Fallon generates, millions of views on platforms like youtube by posting small clips of the most entertaining parts of his show, like playing games or a funny interview. Making it even more crucial to make my groups game segment in our talk show to be as comedic and entertaining as possible.

Filming

We arrived at the college television studio on the long awaited filming day and began to set up. We were prepared with props and me and the host of our show got changed into our outfits for the camera. Although we did not prioritise creating a shot list that was in line with our script to give to the group members in the control room, which made it more difficult for them, because they had to rely on their own initiative to preview and cut to different cameras, this accompanied with the fact that the game segment of our show called 'Word-sneak' required five random words, which we did not bring and essentially left to the last minute. This left us scrambling trying to write down random words that would be comedic enough, when we first arrived and set up. Therefore we now know not to procrastinate smaller details and tasks on future projects and to stay focused on organising and planning all pre production. If i could have done anything differently i would have taken it upon myself to delegate specific tasks to certain group members so everything would have been done in time.

Initially there was a significant time pressure because we only had around an hour and fourty five minutes to film our show in our pre arranged time slot for the studio. We overcame this by maintaining good communication between the people in our group who were in the control room and the camera crew volunteers who were our classmates, using earpieces. Our whole group and myself demonstrated effective intercommunication and people skills in a studio environment while using professional equipment, by listening to instructions and guidance from each other and tutors. I was acting as a celebrity guest on our talk show being interviewed by the host, prior to filming we did a few rehearsals to feel comfortable on set, which did take up some time leaving us with around 40-35 minutes to actually film all of the footage on time. The host had a teleprompter which made filming quicker, however me and the host did not actually come to the studio with all of our lines memorised, we knew the structure and flow of the script but did improvise throughout the show, this once again made it difficult for the group members in the control room who were left improvising what they were doing, however this also made the talk show conversation very spontaneous and casual between me and the host, which meets our initial stated aims and ideas for what we wanted the show to feel like and it met the convention of being free flowing and interactive. Especially during the game segment which was planned to be fully improvised, me and the host did not mess up once and stayed in character the whole time which played a part in us finishing on time. We did have a few mess ups when the teleprompter was going too fast, after the host introduced the show using the teleprompter we were essentially left reciting our lines while improvising. On the first take we did miss out a whole segment of the script but we noted it and didn't do it again on the second take, taking constructive criticism from the crew. In hindsight me and the host should have rehearsed our lines more in our own time, however we still managed to recite the script properly on set and not miss out anything, using our own initiative and exhibiting our ability to work under a time pressure and not be nervous while on camera. Overall in my opinion filming went smoothly because we were able to overcome and adapt to unexpected problems using our own initiative with successful communication that created good teamwork.

Prior to filming we had to record and film the musical band performance for our talk show. After asking permission to use a live room to record and film the performance. We made sure to record the audio of the band on our phones because we could not find any microphones that could be attached to our dslr cameras. Another thing we had to consider was to begin recording on our phones and cameras and then clap so we could match up the audio in post. We overcame technical challenges by thinking beforehand about the problems that could arise if we didn't remember certain technical details. We also had to create a pixilation for our talk show as a part of this unit. My group member and friend used her camera to quickly take pictures as our host was walking across the frame, when the images are played in order you get the pixilation effect. The pixilation part of the unit was quite random, and my group wanted the pixilation to relate to our talk show, so we decided to make a pixilation our talk show intro. The idea was for the logo of the talk show to appear as our host is walking across the screen accompanied with a jazz style intro score.

Post Production

Post production was simple. I assembled all pf the clips we had in order ans chose the best ones. The only small interruptionw as the fact that certain clips that were good were not recorded but that was alright because we had plenty of footage to make up for it. Going back to my initial ideas and inspirations i took various creative inspirations from different sources, for example I liked Jimmy Fallon's intro to his talk show were he walks through New York and his logo appears. The pixilation was taken in front of a green-screen so i edited a photo of London behind the subject, our host who walks' across the screen with the shows logo behind him. The style of logo was derived from The Late Late Show with James Gordon were we have part of the logo in a glowing cursive and the other part of the logo is in a white normal font, the soft illumination of the letters connoting that it is evening time. Once the footage was in order, i downloaded laughter tracks and applause sound effects. I was picky with these sounds because i specifically chose audio were the sound effect sounded like it was coming from a studio, to not only elevate the quality of the show but for it to be more believable. Editing this project also taught me a few new things in premiere pro like how to create credits and how to use shortcuts to speed up editing.

Conclusion

Overall I am happy with the final product and how the show looks. We effectively channeled all of our ideas into the final film and you can see the intertextuality and were we derived our ideas from if you listen and closely watch. I enjoyed filming very much and liked the positive studio environment the crew created by successfully communicating with each other. Highlighting the fact that it takes a team to create something this intricate, I see why the industry is built on networking and the connections you have with others. It gave me the knowledge i have now, which is to always stay organised and to take on more of a leadership role when needed so a group does not forget tasks or fall behind. Preparation is key to working within a time frame and i am very proud of how everyone overcame small challenges and setbacks by using their own motivation and drive just in time, demonstrating very good teamwork in the process. Meanwhile I got to handle professional equipment and had the opportunity to be in a studio environment which also prepares me for my own future in the industry.