During the final year of the Television and Broadcasting course at the University of Portsmouth, students are put into three teams and tasked with producing a series of live TV shows for the CCI TV Channel. Last week marked the beginning of this year's programmes and, as it happened, my group were first up. With only two weeks of preparation and a rather vague brief to work to, we were determined to make our first show one to remember.
These programmes fall under the Television Broadcasting (TVBRO) module, designed to give students the opportunity to work on regular live professional broadcast programming for CCI TV, the course's TV channel. As an amendment for this year, each group, consisting of 12 members, were split into two teams - a production crew and a VT crew. The idea was that both teams would swtich roles after each show, ensuring not only that everyone got the chance to experience both aspects of the production process but also that the size and scale of delivering a 30 minute live broadcast was more manageable. In addition, on the day of the transmission, each group would be assigned a crew made up of one of the other teams' sub-groups to assist with the live studio roles.
A table indicating the rotation of each team and sub-group producing a show for the CCI TV Channel over the course of the year
After being given an introductory lecture explaining the aims and requirements of the module, we were given the brief for our first show - CCI. For anyone unfamiliar with the acronym, CCI is the faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Portsmouth which includes courses such as photography, architecture, fashion and textiles, illustration, animation, computer games technology and television and broadcasting to name a few. Therefore, our first programme was to focus on the CCI faculty and inform the audience of the latest developments from within it.
Over the next few days, I organised the group into our production and live roles so that work on the "CCI" show could commence. This was achieved through group meetings and each member outlining their role preferences. Once the delegation of roles was finalised, I was able to pitch an idea for the show that I had been planning for some time over the summer. Conveniently, our show would mark the ten year anniversary of CCI TV. Therefore, this provided us with a primary topic for the show as well as a title - CCI TV: 10 Years.
For this show, I was assigned the roles of Quality Control and Logistics for the VTs and Vision Mixer for the live broadcast, two roles I had not yet had the chance to try out. I will go into more depth about one of these roles in a future blog post. However, I enjoyed learning how to operate the TriCaster for the first time and assisted on the VT shoots by checking continuity and issues in the script.
A table I created to help organise and delegate team roles for the each part of show's production
The day of the show was particulary intense for the group as we were unfortunately unable to complete a full rehearsal. Therefore, we were unsure of the exact timings, a problem that would later be reflected in the final show runtime of 29:01. However, considering the circumstances, the show on the whole was a success. Having been given only two weeks to produce the programme, the VTs were well shot and edited, and the broadcast incorporated a creative menu graphic that helped to signpost to the viewer what was coming up in the show. In my opinion, one of the best parts of the show's production was the effective contributions of everyone in the group and the way in which each member cooperated efficiently with one another.
Looking ahead to our next CCI TV show, I think that marketing and promotion needs more attention. While our show was praised for its quality and content, we were critisised for a lack of social media presence. Thankfully, we have an extra week to produce the next programme with another given topic - education. Therefore, this will allow for the planning of social media posts and how we will interact with people through the different platforms.