Off Record

Off Record - TV show

- Second Year TV Project

- December 2014

My Role: Vision Mixer, Buskers VT Director

This brief gave us more creative control in that we had to find our own talent and could choose the genre and target audience of the programme, but it still had to be music based and feature a live performance. It was also our first experience of making a VT that we had to pitch, research and plan ourselves. 

Each member of the team had to pitch a VT idea that would fit to one of several themes we were given. I chose the theme 'Music in Society' and focused on the role of Buskers. This idea was selected by the group and we went on to make it (which I was secretly incredibly proud of). So we researched some local buskers and got in contact with a couple and ended up interviewing some local musicians. This was a nerve wracking experience, but we had to maintain a professional air about ourselves. We faced challenges that we had to overcome when filming on location, including how to record a musical performance and not letting it be compromised by the general background noise of a busy high street. On another occasion we also had to deal with faulty equipment when one of our microphones wouldn't behave itself. However, the beauty of interviewing musicians is they know how to deal with sound equipment and the lovely Jamie helped sort it out. 

Once all the filming was done I thought the editing would be easy. I had used editing software before but Avid is a whole other entity. Actually, I had even used Avid before and it still gave me problems. It's a tricky program to learn but not too hard when you get the hang of it, which I eventually did. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, the hours of editing and tweaking paid off. 

The recording of the live show went well. I really enjoyed being the vision mixer and would love to pursue this further. I worked out some fancy fades and transitions that enabled us to mirror the music video of the original song.I find the desk very logical. Just think of it as any other computer system, it doesn't make mistakes, only the operator does. If it does something you didn't want it to do it's not the desks fault, it did exactly what you told it to. The buttons don't rewire themselves or do something different because they feel like it. You just have to learn what they do and press the right ones. It's like a science, or a computer game. I like science and computer games, I like logic. So, it makes sense that I like the vision mixing desk. 

Also I designed the logo for Off Record, it went through several designs. 

But in the end this was the winner:

The show turned out pretty well but there are definitely things I would change if we did it again. It didn't really fit the target audience, we were trying to go for an older viewer. This was part of the reason for the record, its an old technology so it would appeal to the people who used them, but also it's quite trendy. The target audience got lost when we were making the programme, which is a shame. I personally would change the set to something different, although I don't know what and also I would change the presenter for an older individual.