Why hello thar, um yeah..panel show. I contacted a friend who I knew was interested in sound to see if he would be interested in helping out on the show. Fortunately he was and so our growing team got together and planned what we could do with audio. We were restricted to two boom mics and one tie clip. [end punctuation/spelling/grammar correctness to increase speed] we had no mixer which was a bit of a problem as we only had 2 DVC 30 cameras which would be reach the teams if we were to connect the microphones directly to the camera. a lack of microphone ports on the cameras and the fact that no microphone could reach our presenter from our camera positions meant that we had an issue.
wearing our friendliest smiles, we approached a couple of very helpful fellows who had access to a sound desk to see what we might be able to get. a legendary half hour later, we had secured ourselves a sound desk and four lollipop mics. we were pleased.
our last rehearsal came and we had a really fun 5 hours (originally meant to be 2) in which our presenter nailed her lines, the set was set and markers were put down for us to be able to reassemble it on the night. we did this also for our camera tripod positions and we managed to learn how to turn on, change, and set our lighting design. we were on form, the lighting was good, presenter was happy and confident and the crew had bonded greatly. it was a good night.
the pilot finally arrived and our crew had assembled. i managed to find 8 willing TV students to help out with camera operating and a few scriptwriters took on the role of welcoming our audience with wine, biscuits and cakes (hyper audiences - ftw). the crew had just 30 minutes to set up everything and i had this time to brief and remind everyone of their duties on the night. our first problem arrived when we discovered that our lollipop mics had no grips. a lot of sellotaping later and the issue was resolved. our next problem arrived again in sound with the simplest yet nontheless panic-inducing of issues. our sound op's headphones didnt have the required jack to plug into the mixer meaning that he had no way of listening to the audio. no one had a jack on them and so i tested my jogging abilities by running all the way home and back again just in time to give Mr Sound his jack with a few minutes to spare. we set our lighting up according to the design we had constructed in our rehearsal. however, it was different. not right. (it transpired that the lighting rig had been moved by someone) and so our lighting didnt look right. none of us were lighting experts and so we had to make do with what we had. the show started...
it went well thankfully. the audience laughed, the VT worked and we finished on time. many handshakes and pats on the backs took place as the audience slowly filed out. one audience member asked me if i had made the show, i replied that i had directed and he said "that was amazing" with a facial expression lacking in forced politeness. that was nice.
a few celebratory drinks followed and we all went to bed rather pleased with ourselves.
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