Creative Studio Lesson 2: PA and Presenter

For this lesson, I tried the production assistant and presenter role which was intense. Since there are many things happening at once and you have to pay attention to it all. The PA role wasn’t bad once I got a hang of what to do. To start the stopwatch when the guest speaks so the interview lasts exactly 1 minute before the clip is played. Yet this can be difficult when I’m calling the director’s instructions for cameras as well. So I’m saying which camera we’re on whilst also counting down to the VT at the same time. This was for a chat show where the student talks about a film they made. For the rest of the lesson, I tried the presenter role and interviewed Kayleigh about the short film she made. This was difficult for a number of reasons: I had to follow a schedule to que the clip and end of the show which was hard because I had to watch Kayleigh answer whilst also using the corner of my eye to see the floor manager’s signals. I came up with random questions by just looking at the short film; I haven’t done this before so didn’t know what I was doing and had to learn some lines from the script for each section of the show. There was a lot I had to remember and follow to bring the show and since this was my first time it was awkward but not terrible. To film this show we used the triangle principle. Which follows the conversation between two central players that ‘can be deployed in a pair of linear arrangements: a straight line composition, and a right angle relation.’ This information comes from the Grammar of the Film Language book by Daniel Arijon; that contains illustrations on these linear arrangements. We could develop everything we’ve learned further and make a well-organised chat show. Now I know how the show works, next time will be better.