Chatbox Blogs

Contributors

finding the right contributors for the show was a challenge at the start as we as a team needed to find people that were happy being filmed and also be joyful and cheery on screen, as thats what makes the show interesting, otherwise it would just be boring. The first pair of contributors were good on the camera, they spoke clearly and both had conflicting views with each others program. But when they were watching the show there was not enough reactions and chatting happening, all we got were mere facial expressions and a few giggles. Once we headed back from filming, we watched the footage back and it just was not good enough to use as part of the TV show.

So I had contacted a few people after we decided we needed new contributors, so I had Andy confirm he was available to help us and do the show, but he could not get one of his friends to come with him, which meant I had to quickly find more people, so I asked my own friends that if they would be up to do the show, which they both happily said yes, as they were both up for it, I knew how to make the show work, giving them a pep talk and showing them previous footage, showing and telling them how I wanted them to act and they had no problem with it, 3^rd time lucky we found the perfect contributors, with more than enough reactions and chat. 

Location

Initially I had messaged a person I was in a Facebook group with, the group has creators all over Scotland from professionals to amateurs and also people who owned studio spaces, I had messaged Michael who was offering studio spaces near the barrow lands in town, but of course we did not really have a budget for the show, so I politely asked if we could borrow his studio space and make a little set for the show, I explained we were students and that he would get credited for it, but it just was not happening as he denied us access and rejected the idea, so we had to move on and find a different space.

There were 3 spaces available, Reece’s House, Cameron Packer’s House and Hannah’s House, but Reece made a map and measured if it can be shot in his living room, which was the final location we used, after moving the whole living room around we made a nice set up for the show, which enables us to use 2 cameras and a full lighting kit, making sure we got the best looking image for the show.

Effective Camera work

As I was assigned as Camera, I had a vision of how the show would look and piece together, so the show it self was shot with a double camera set up, camera 1 was the only camera that was moving, getting both the contributors, panning and catching all the reactions of whoever was reacting at the time, making it the main camera. The 2^nd camera was a mirrorless 4K Sony Camera which was a stable camera set up behind the TV screen that the contributors were watching, catching a wide shot and the reactions of both the boys. 

I had also gone in to town to get b roll footage of the city centre, as this would give the editor a choice of b-roll clips to slot in where he thought would be correct.

I actually really enjoyed shooting in the gym at night with the 2 boys as they were more themselves in front of the camera and were not shy as they are my friends, so catching them on camera having fun and working out, was a fun shoot, it was a really important shoot as well as the sequence was being made to put in the start of the show as an introduction to both of the boys. Shooting in the gym gave me a good idea of what time to go in and shoot as I have a few friend who are wanting to create content for their PT Instagram pages, it was an overall good experience.

Editing Style

When doing research, we watched Gogglebox as we were emulating that type of show so we studied the VO actor, the camera work and the transitions of how they move from one guest to the other, however we only had 1 pair of contributors making it easier in someways and difficult in others.

The show itself is cut slowly, having a few seconds with the contributors, then moving on to the show, then showing the reactions and chat of what they thought of what they have seen so far. We initially had the idea of Contributors>Short Scene from show>Contributors Reaction> Long Scene from show> Contributors reaction.

That is the way we imagines it as that is how Goggle box edit their, but as we carried on the editing, we have chosen to show more cuts and keep a nice balance between the contributors and the scenes from the show.

For our pop factual program i helped find contributors, find locations, scripting the voice over, and recording the voice over post production. 

I wanted to use my flat mates as contributors but unfortunately due to their work commitments they were unable to take part. Luckily Saad had asked his friends so we were able to use them instead.

I also had my flat as an option for filming, but the space was smaller than our other options and it was better than we found somewhere else.

Reece and I scripted the voice over by going through our footage and writing down comments that we thought would be funny in the voiceover. We also wrote down dialogue for joining the show together and for gaps. 
We then recorded the voice over with Cammy, recording different ways of saying the comments and making sure we had enough to work with. We recorded extra just in case.

By watching television shows such as Gogglebox, I was able to understand the nature of pop factual programmes, and more about what makes them all work. We took inspiration from the use of voiceover in Gogglebox, which adds comedy and also keeps the show moving. 

Location

For our show we had to find a location that is big enough to contain all the equipment and crew but it also had to be in a living room environment. This is because the contributors will be watching TV so it will make the show feel more natural if the are watching it in a living room. This is what they do in gogglebox and it looks really good.

Our first plan was to go to Hannah Traynors flat who is one of the crew members as it is close to town but we had a problem as the location wasn’t big enough and she has flatmates who would be in on the days we were filming so that location was ruled out.

Our second idea was to contact collegelands which is student accommodation. The reason is because they have a cinema room with couches and a tv on the wall but the room wasn’t wide enough to fit all the equipment in so we also had to leave that one out.

We also had another idea which was to use one of 2 other crew members houses which was my house and Cameron Packers house. The problem was that these houses are far away from town but luckily Saad Mohammed and Ben Allardice could drive who are 2 other crew members.

Reece Wilkinson 06/11/2019

We finally decided to film at my house because it is bigger than Cameron Packers so we are able to fit all of the equipment in.

On the first day we got Ben and Saad to drive to my house with the crew and equipment. We didn’t know if we could fit all the equipment and crew in the one car but we could so on the second day we just had Saad drive the crew and equipment to my house while Ben drove straight from his home and I just stayed home and set everything up.

While doing to edit I am happy that we filmed here because we were able to use two cameras to film and it looks good as one camera got a two shot and the other one got a one shot of whoever was talking so it looks nice when it cuts back and forth from a two shot to a one shot.

Reece Wilkinson 21/11/2019

The one problem we had with this location was the fact that I have a dog who might bark during the shoot but we worked around that by giving him his toy and he was quiet for the whole day.

Reece Wilkinson 01/12/2019

Contributors

For our contributors we had to think about who would be the best type of people for our TV show. We had thought about types of duos that would go well together such as a mum and her son, two friends or even two strangers. We even thought about getting actors instead and writing a script for them but we realised that it wouldn’t seem natural enough so we left that idea out. We also had to think of the types of TV shows the people watch as you want the shows to be different from each others because if they both like the same types of shows, they won’t have much to say.

We decided to go with either two friends or two strangers. We had a think about which would be the best and we decided to do it with two friends because we thought that two strangers would be really awkward with each other and that they wouldn’t talk as much as friends but two friends will be able to talk about it much more. We thought about putting posters up and getting two strangers who are friends to help out but we then decided that it would be easier to just ask our friends if they were up for it.

We first asked the students in the other HND TV class if they would be up for being our contributors but they were busy making their own shows so we had to leave them out. We then all asked friends that we knew out of college if they would be willing to help and I finally found two contributors who knew each other and who liked completely different types of shows and Saad had found two other contributors.

We filmed with the contributors I knew on the first week of filming but while filming them, they barely spoke throughout them watching the show and the answers to the questions weren’t good enough. We thought they would have been a good duo as one of them hates the other persons genre of shows but they just didn’t talk enough.

The next week we filmed two more contributors who were Saads friends but they spoke throughout the entire show which was great because it then meant we had loads of content. We were going to get more contributors in on the week after but we realised that we had enough content with those two contributors so we are now just using them for our show.

Reece Wilkinson 21/11/2019

TV Shows

For my show, we had to pick TV shows for our contestants to watch. We asked the contestants to give us a list of shows to watch but we asked them to pick a show which was about 20-30 minutes long because if it was a long episode then it would be really difficult and time consuming to edit as there would be a lot of footage to cut down.

The first set of contestants had picked JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures Part 5 Episode 2 which is an anime which is 20 minutes long and Black Adder Season 4 Episode 6 which is a historical comedy which is 30 minutes long. These were good TV shows as they were short and very different from each other but the contestants didn’t talk much while watching them so we couldn’t use that footage anymore.

The second set of contestants didn’t watch any short shows as they only really watched shows that were 40 minutes to an hour. We would of changed contestants to ones who watched shorter shows but we found out their shows a few days before we were filming so we had to stick with them. The shows that these contestants picked were Top Boy Season 3 Episode 10 which is an hour long and Prison Break Season 1 Episode 1 which is 45 minutes long.

Because the contestants picked longer episodes, we told them to skip to the important scenes of the show but to try and not skip any scenes that would get a good reaction out of the other person. This ended up working as it cut a lot of time off of the edit so it didn’t take as long to look over the footage and cut it down.

Even though at first we thought about changing the second pair of contestants because their shows were too long, it turned out that those contestants were actually really good because they talked throughout the entire show meaning we have a lot of content to use.

For the edit, we had to get footage for the shows that the contestants were watching. Because we didn’t use the contestants from the first week, we didn’t have to worry about getting the shows for the edit but we had to with the second pair of contestants. Luckily the shows that they were watching were already on Netflix so all I did was just screen record the entire show on my laptop and I can now use that in the edit.

Reece Wilkinson 21/11/2019

Editing

For the edit, I only edited the second days footage as there wasn’t enough content in the first days footage.

At first I had to take all of the footage of them watching the show and line up both of the cameras footage so that it was all synced together. After I had done that I went through the entire footage of Top Boy and Prison Break and picked out all of the entertaining bits of them talking. This then cut all the footage down from 45 minutes of Top Boy to 25 minutes and about 35 minutes of Prison Break down to 20 minutes. After cutting it down to the shorter times, I realised at this point that we had enough content just to use one set of contestants instead of two because we had plenty of content here and cutting it down to just 7 minutes was going to be extremely difficult.

At this point I decided that I was going to put the footage of the show over the top of them speaking so that I could see what scenes they are talking about which they do in Gogglebox but I ended up finding this very difficult as during the time of the contestants watching the show, they were skipping scenes to make it shorter so that it was easier to edit. Unfortunately, this actually made it more difficult for us to edit as we didn’t record the screen while they were watching it so they only way we could find out what scene they were is is by listening to the sound coming out the TV.

We got some help from one of our lecturers who showed us that for the footage of the two cameras, you can actually turn Premiere Pro into a multi cam so that you can watch the footage and cut back and forth from camera one and two making it a lot easier to edit as we thing we would have to cut it in ourselves.

A week after trying to put the TV show footage over the footage of the contestants, we asked our lecturer for an easier way of putting the footage over the top and he said that we should cut the footage of the contestants down to about 6 minutes first and then put the footage over the top as it means that there is less content to put the footage over, making it easier to do.

I have now cut it down and put the footage over the top of the show and I just need to use the multi cam tool again to cut between the TV show and the contestants watching it as well as put the voiceover in, colour grade and fix the sound.

Reece Wilkinson 21/11/2019

I have merged the footage of the show with the contestants watching the show. I have also put the voiceover in and put music over the top and it is now all put together and is exactly 15 minutes long. I have fixed the sound levels for it all which took longer than expected as one of the contestants spoke louder than the other so it took longer as I had to keep on fixing the audio levels, each time one of them spoke. I have started the colour grading which i will finish on Monday.

Reece Wilkinson 29/11/2019