Unfortunatly, i do not have a perticular 'diary' for this project as i forgot to include one, where as i have recorded all "Art Director" meetings and decisions below in the form of scanned in pictures and explanations.

Final Set Design

We proberly spent in total about 2/3 weeks working day in day out on our final set, getting it painted, and touching it up so that it looked as good as it possibly could on the cameras. Because of how much we had to do in in such a short amount of time, we had some help from the rest of our class painting and actually putting the set up.

Here are some pictures that i have taken on my phone of the final set.

If you would like to see these images bigger, click on them :)

This was the first design that me and my group of four came up with.

along the back are the flats, used to create scenery, we are planning on painting them a kind of dark blue as when you are filming, it will give the set that extra feeling of depth.

Next we have the panel where the Talent and the Host will sit. Our talent will be two contestants from groups A & B, and our host is yet to be decided.

We want to use a semi-circle as our panel table just because we thing it will look really good. the table with also be painted blue, but a lighter shade then that of the the flats. at the bottom of this imamge you can see what our idea was for the flat along the front of the panel. We wanted to incorperate the Suffolk New College college colours in with the show, so we designed it to have the logo on the front, the name of the show in the same colours, and some coloured stripes on the top of the panel, also following the same pattern.

Of course we had to make space for the audience and camera to move too. however i have not yet come to drawing up a scaled floor plan of the studio, including the design, these will be added to this blog post as soon as they have been completed.

During one of our sessions with Jon Dempsey, he asked the entire group to come up with some ideas for the set. this particular one was drawn by the group of Alex Palmer, Reece Selvadorai, Amy Rush Da Silva, Stephanie Whiskin and Sheani. Once everyone had finished drawing, we took a vote and this one came out on top. The Art Directors and myself decieded that the best way to do this was to use there idea of blown up images but we wouldnt use so many of them as they may distract the audience.

As an art director, and thinking ahead of the game, i thought it would be a good idea to try and sort out a show name. I went around our group and got everyone to give in surgestions. Then i got everybody to vote and i created a tally to keep a record of that. As you can see, the clear winner was 'Media Meltdown' which was surgested by Steph. This then became our show name.

This is a Doodle design, the art directors came up with an iPod idea, so i drew it out to see how it would look

This is the Scaled drawing that I did, photocopied and distributed amoung the art directors. This is also our final design.

Pre-production and planning

Everybody in our class was assigned a role to undertake for the pre production of our 'live tv event' project. we were all put in to 4 groups of 4 and one group of 5. The roles consisted of a Content/Round producer, Post-Production Producer, Technical Producer and an Art Director, which is the role i undertoke.

through the entire project, i did have some dificulty with the set designing and construction as on several occastions, i was either the only one there, or there was only two of us out of 5. we had several designs drew up that i will later post in a seperate blog. and i also drew up a to scale drawing of our final design which i photocoppied and handed out amoung the artistic directors.

Notes on Multi Camera Production

Lighting:
Each light has its own socket and number, these are the names of some of the lights used in the TV studio;

Horestant tubed lights - create a soft disperced lighting
Barn doors - the black flaps around a light that contripute to determing where the light goes
Small spotlights - Concentrated hard light.
Tuncston flood light - used to light scenery
Demapack - where you control the lighting

STUDIO
TERMINATION
OUTLET
BOX

The studio we use uses black curtains and black curtain racks, the main reason for this is it helps to absorb an waste light, where as white would reflect the light.

On set roles:
There are on average, 11 key roles in set of any televion production:

Director - in charge of what happens during production. To be most effective at this role, you should be quick, clear, and incredibly good under pressure.
Assistant director - tells people off when they are doing something wrong and occasionally help the director when needed to.
Producer - In charge of the content of the production
Cameraman - the male/female who controls the camera. to be the best, you should be creative, and not be affraid to try weird angles and shots.
Camera operating assistant - the person who carries the cables from the camera to insure they dont get damaged
Talent - the stars of the show, be it actors, actresses, hosts, hostess, contestants, news reporters etc. The best talent are those who are most comfortable infront of a camera and who speak at the same sound level instead of being really quiet and then really loud.
Floor manager - has direct contact with the director during production, the floor manager checks that everything runs smoothly and also that the camera operators do as they are supposed to. The best type of floor manager are those who are always one step of head, who can see things that will help the talent, the director, the sound ops and of course the cameramen. And also understands the floor lingo.
Floor managers assistant - helps the Floor manager do her/his job.
Spare sound op - normally used to fix a sound problem with a mic if something goes wrong.
Sound operator - is in control of using the audio mixer and making sure that all the transmissions do not exceed 0 dB
Lighting - they control the lighting, they determine which lights to use and which lights need to be dimmed.

While producing, the director may remove the producer from the studio.
Talk back systems are used during productions so that the directors voice can be heard at all times, each camera man, assistant and floor manager will have to wear one and they are not allowed to be removed until told to do so. They are mainly refered to as Cans.

Analouge & Digital:
Almost as equipment nowadays are digital and not analouge. Mics, Stob + Audio desk all give off an analouge signal. Its only when it reaches the DN 300 HDD that the analouge signal is converted into a Digital signal. The Audio desks used can take up to 12 mics each, also inside every CD player there is a little chip that is an Digital to Analouge Converter (DAC) and in the DN 300 HDD there is an Analouge to Digital converter (ADC)

We measure sound in decibels (dB), while recording, you always have a volume unit meter. (Vu meter) Vu meters have three levels, Green, Orange and Red. Speech is always in the orange bar, normally coming in at levels -18 to -9, you should never let the sound hit 0. If it hits 0 then when you play back the sound it will be distortioned and horrible to listen to. You should always try and keep the sound between -12 and -21/-24, and lower than that and it will be very quiet, and any higher and you will get terrible distortion.

Cinematography;
There are a few technical names that you need to know in order to get anywhere during production,
Pan - Moving camera side to side.
Tilt - Moving camera up or down.
Crab - Moving camera to the left or the right
Track - Moving the camera back or forward
Its always best to try and avoid using a zoom, as our eyes don't zoom, it can look un-natural, The red light on the top of a camera is called a Tally light, this shows that your camera is being used and is live.