The CCI Studio (courtesy of CCI TV Channel Facebook)
With the TVBRO module well underway, my group managed to complete another live programme last week, CCI TV: Education. Once again, I undertook new positions I had not yet tried out as I stepped into the roles of Production Manager and Show Director. Therefore, one of the main tasks I was assigned for this show was the organisation and management of the CCI Studio. Every live broadcast is required to use this space for a section of the programme. However, despite having a professional green screen studio at our disposal, actually utilising it in an innovative way turned out to be quite the challenge.
The use of a green screen, or chroma keying, is quite common within television broadcasting and can be seen in weather forecast bulletins. This technique allows the subject to be digitally imposed on to a virtual background. Therefore, this allows for a vast amount of creative opportunities as the presenter can be made to appear in any setting. Unfortunately, the CCI Studio has become something of a conundrum for the majority of the CCI TV shows. Usually, it is used for a presenter to read reels of text from an auto-cue in a static virtual studio. This may be due to a lack of original ideas to effectively use the technology in an inventive and unique way. However, it could be argued that students have failed to take full advantage of the studio and, as a result, one of the lecturers has started to refer to the section of a show based in the CCI Studio as an "information dump."
A screenshot of the standard virtual set from the CCI Studio taken from our previous show
After volunteering to be Director for our show, one of my aims was to ensure that the CCI Studio was used in a creative and engaging way. It was decided during pre-production that the subject of how to get into teaching would be covered in the CCI Studio. While this may not have been the most engaging topic, we brainstormed various methods of delivering this information to the audience. Eventually, we settled on the idea of transforming the studio into a classroom and having the presenter act as a teacher in front of a white board. Therefore, I began creating our set on Illustrator based on a reference image of a classroom from the perspective we were looking to achieve.
A few days before our first rehearsal, we managed to test out the set in the TriCaster. By this point, the idea had developed with the addition of text animations to highlight key points during the section. However, despite our best efforts to revamp the studio, it continued to feel like an "information dump." The presenter and the set were both still quite static. Therefore, we considered how we could get the presenter to interact with the virtual environment:
1. We changed the text animations so that the presenter would pretend to write them on to the whiteboard as they were mentioned.
2. We expanded upon the idea of a virtual classroom by having the presenter refer to it directly and revealing it after showing them standing in an empty "virtual reality" room.
3. At the end of the segment, the presenter would once again refer to the fact that the classroom was "only virtual" before having physical objects thrown at him as they conclude.
The transition of the "holodeck" into the virtual classroom
After making these changes, the section seemed far more engaging and entertaining, with an informative and humorous tone. The final product shown in the live broadcast below was a great success, and received praise from viewers who described it as "funny" and "clever." At last, it seems we have managed to break the stigma of the CCI Studio being simply an "information dump." I hope that this may act as an example to other CCI TV broadcasts of how to use the "room of requirement" to its maximum potential and how to deliver information to the audience in an intriguing way.