Week 6 – our last training session before half term. Not sure how we have got to this point so quickly! Today, we introduced our hand held mics. The crew are well rehearsed with interviewing from their Media Crew days, but it’s been a while since we’ve used mics, as we used Zoom as our chosen interview platform during the recent lockdowns.
The e2e Crew are getting used to setting up the cameras and tripods at the beginning of the session, and are starting to get to grips with adding the receiver and matching the relevant radio transmitter. We have made the decision to re-arrange the crews for the next few weeks, at least until the Summer holidays; wanting to mix up experience with emerging talent. Although because of current Covid guidelines, we have kept our secondary school crew together for the moment.
Once set up, the crews practiced their interview skills – one crew stayed in the Studio and swapped between camera, sound and in front of camera roles. One crew did similar outside the Studio in the corridor and the other two set off a little further. One was recording a school tour, stopping to record to camera at various points around school. Whilst the other crew made up their own TV Show and went off to interview staff; making up little scenes around school. All of them ended up in the school hall filming a teacher dancing, enabling different camera angles to be experimented with!
Week 7 – Back after half term and the temperature is HOT! We wanted to continue to develop interview skills, but with more focus and purpose. We are aiming to keep our input at the start of sessions to bitesize chunks, but occasionally find ourselves talking for too long! The crew were tasked with setting up and checking their equipment and once ready, we transported everything to the school field, where our training session could include interviewing the after school club children.
Seeing the crews work together and settle their interviewees before beginning the interview was fantastic and lovely to see; children were put at ease and enjoyed their experience in front of camera!
Lorraine Smith – June 2021
Week 7 included our second equipment mishap. The first was just a lens hood becoming loose (although it still worried the crew for a few minutes), the second saw the lens hood protect the camera when it fell off a tripod, as it hadn’t been secured properly. Thankfully the camera fell onto a wooden shed floor and was fine, but the lens hood broke into pieces along one side. A valuable reminder of many things: we are training and no ‘one’ person is to blame as we work as a team. It also gave us the perfect reason to stop and reflect in depth – we are taking risks with this style of hands on learning using professional equipment – and we need to mitigate risks as much as we can; yet without diluting the experience, but instead actually strengthening it. We want to involve the children in how we move forward regarding safety and working as a team.
end2end TV CIC 