The essential nature of the PA’s role is highlighted in a live new broadcast. Major news events (such as those of September 11th) take precedence over the news items that are planned (or indeed scheduled programmes.) In this scenario the PA must think on their feet to ensure that they know the exact duration of any additional material and decide what is going to be the most appropriate material to cut to keep the programme within it’s allocated slot.
With this brief to follow, the PA’s tools are a series of stopwatches and a heavily annotated running order. The stopwatches keep track of the overall programme length and each piece on separate clocks. The PA’s running order is concerned with the times of each piece, to ascertain these the PA must liaise with the presenters to find out how long it takes them to read each part of the script. The PA can then ascertain at what time and which section of script corresponds to the cue for the VT operator.
Evaluating our own production. Several problems were faced during the making of our programme. Firstly the inexperience of the people involved which the module aimed to rectify. Secondly we were not equipped with earpieces for the presenters. This meant that any communication from the gallery to the presenters had to be channelled through the floor manager, this lead to some confusion as well as the presenters focussing on the floor managers non-verbal signalling rather than looking straight to camera.
Thirdly, there was only one out of three cameras equipped with auto-cue. In order that the presenter’s eye-line was straight out to the audience, the one auto-cue camera ended up being pivotal. There was a stretch of four stories which had to be delivered by one presenter straight to the same camera as there was no way of feeding the script from another angle.
Finally, the position of the monitors within their housing in the gallery was such that it was very difficult for the VT operator to see the clocks on the tape before each VT piece. This problem was solved by the producer giving instructions to the VT operator as to the state of the clock. This solution took more time and meant that is was sometimes quite a close call as to whether the VT was ready in time to be played. This situation also meant more noise in the gallery, which must have been detrimental to the concentration of the other members of the team in there.
A human caused shortcoming of our broadcast was that it ran thirty seconds under the required time. This was caused by a combination of events. We were given a newsflash to insert with no warning at all. This meant that the timings for the rest of the programme were out. It was decided to cut the interview that was to take place later by thirty seconds to make way for the newsflash. Unfortunately, the presenter cut the interview by almost a minute, this situation was difficult for the PA to convey to the presenter because of the afore mentioned lack of earpieces. At the end of the programme when it was realised how long had to be filled, the request was sent to the presenters to pad the end of the programme out, however, this banter failed to materialise, this lead the cue for the VT to start being late which resulted in a ten second shot of the presenters looking to camera without saying anything and the programme ending early.
A further fault with the production was the lighting. The lighting operator had been absent for a number of weeks, which meant that the soundman was filling in with rudimentary control of the lights. However, the arrangement of them was left as it had been found, this resulted in some of the shots having rather more shadow than would have been preferred. As well as having control of the lights our soundman did a wonderful job, there were no instances where the microphones were left on longer than they should have, and they were always turned on in time for the presenters voice to be heard. During the VT’s the sound was perfect, and the transition from read over to using the sound on tape during one of the sports VT’s went smoothly.
The section of the programme that couldn’t be scripted – the interview also went ok. The presenter had a library of questions to refer to so was never stuck for something to say. The vision mixing in this part of the production was also done without being set out before hand. We used two cameras, one for each participant and cut between them as the speech swung from one conversant to the other. Bearing this fact in mind, that particular piece of the broadcast went perfectly well.
My own contribution. I was involved in the writing of one of the pieces (the Smoking Kids item) and was a member of the team that filmed the NTL story and part of the Drugs story. I was also involved in editing these pieces. Being the VT operator meant that I was responsible for all the videotapes which were needed. Several problems were faced with one of the tapes (the control track had corroded apparently) this involved some frantic editing to get all the pieces available for the broadcast. As a consequence of these technical problems we had to do several rehearsals without some of the VT’s being properly ready.
My role meant that I had to work quite closely with the PA, I collected the exact times of each of the VT’s and was able to supply the ten second count down at the end of each piece, this spread the PA’s load making the production run smoother. As well as having the standard running order and script, I produced myself a VT running order, which had all the VT’s in the order that they appeared, complete with their running time including the ten second clock and a note giving the exact time the ten second end call was needed.
For my job to run smoothly it was essential that I was organised. Each tape was correctly labelled and the three tapes I was using were set out in order to make changing them easier. As previously mentioned my personalised running order was also present, this had notes on it regarding the best time to change the tapes and when I had enough time to fast forward the tape with the titles on. To make sure that each video piece was ready in time, I had to make sure that as soon as one piece had finished I got the tape ready for the next piece as quickly as possible as there was only twenty seconds between two of the VT’s, this meant that I had ten seconds to wind the video on before I had to set it running again so that it would appear at the right time. Again working closely with the PA meant that I had in depth knowledge of all the times that concerned me.
As I was the only member of the team with a detailed knowledge of each tape and it’s relation to the overall programme I also had to work with the vision mixer and sound operator ensuring that they knew the right places to cut to the video and the sound respectively. It was also essential that the sound operator knew which video pieces were intended to be read overs so that the presenters mikes were kept up. Another point at which teamwork was essential was for one of the sports pieces were the first half of the video clip was read over and the second used the sound on tape. Several run throughs were needed in order to get the sound levels and the video start points right. At the beginning of each session I also had to work with the sound operator so that a check could made that the sound on tape came through ok. A further problem was the NTL VT, there was a section of the piece which was filmed in a noisy environment, the sound operator needed prior warning of this to ensure that the sound was mixed live to reduce the difference in levels within the piece.
Taken as a whole, I feel that the team worked well together to produce the piece. Each person was aware of their job and how it related to everyone else’s position within the team. This enabled us to get the programme running smoothly and for us to be able to cope with the unexpected when it happened.
