Studio Production: Jib Shots: With & Without the Set

What Are my Shots for the Show?

Whilst rehearsing and learning throughout the show, I took some pictures of my key shots which will be used for the whole show. However once we received our sets for the show, some of my shots on the jib had to be changed due to the setup being smaller and generally different to how we rehearsed (which was expected). Nonetheless, below are some images of the shots which I had before our set arrived.

Introduction & End Shot (from TV to the panelists)

The initial opening shot consisted of moving the jib from the top right corner of the stage panning down diagonally to the bottom left of the stage - aiming at where the panelists and presenter are sitting. This creates a nice establishing opening shot as this will be the initial opening shot, which enables the audience to see the width of the stage and the stage itself. As well as the introduction shot, this will also be used for the ending shot, however going the opposite way. So instead of going from the top right to the bottom left, it will go bottom left to the top right, however this time aiming to have the television we will be using in the centre of the screen to enable the end credits to play. This can be seen in the video below.

Throughout Debates: Tilting Up & Down

Whilst the debates are on, my role for this section is to continuously create a tracking shot which tilts up to down. This should begin at a very high point and once we have our stage, it should begin at the top of the stage and then eventually make its way down to the bottom of the stage - ending with a nice low angle shot of the panelists and presenter. Here, I continued to do this throughout the debate so that the directors can cut to my shot if needed as it will always be moving. However at some cases, I would stop at the beginning of the shot if I'm instructed to be on standby, so that the directors are guaranteed the shot starting from beginning to end. This can be seen in the video and images below.

The jib will begin at a high angle from around here, and then travel down until....

...it reaches a low angle of the panelists and presenter.

Which you can see happen in this video

Advert Break Shot

As our studio is set up into 2 sections, we have an allocated section for an advert break (purely to remain conventional for television, as most shows will have a break). Therefore this shot is quite similar to my tilting up and down shot, however this time I use the jib to tilt as high as it can, making sure that it leaves the stage and looks up towards the roof of the studio. This is used to reinforce that there is a break, and the jib will then return back down towards the stage and panelists once the show returns back from it's break.

Moving from Panelist to VTs (and vice versa)

As our show has 4 VTs (Video Tapes), a shot is needed to go from the panelists to view these VTs. This shot consisted of moving from the panelists to the TV - similar to the introduction/ending shot however there wasn't as much movement due to the TV being allocated next to the panelist's right. Therefore, I had to move the camera from the bottom-left up to around the middle-right, where we thought and planned the TV to be positioned.

Audience Shot

Last but not least, I will also have an audience shot. We have planned to have the audience positioned behind the cameras, meaning I will need to do a 180 degrees swing to capture this shot. We agreed that there doesn't need to be a perfectly-angled shot for this shot - along as there is a shot of the audience who take up the majority of the camera then it isn't entirely important. This can be seen in an image below, which shows a couple of my colleagues pretending to be part of the audience.

Audience Shot

Shots With the Set (Final Shots)

Once the set arrived and was set up - everything started to become real and exciting. However, in terms of my camera shots, I faced a couple of problems, which were:

There was much less movement on the jib due to the set being smaller than expected. This meant shots such as the TV to panelists were much more restricted, as there wasn't much room between the TV and panelists (the TV wasn't as high up as expected). So, I had to quickly adapt to this less movement which was quite problematic as it was a whole new swinging motion which I had to learn in just a couple of days.

As well as this, we were faced with another problem with the jib in one of our final rehearsals. It seemed that when the jib was doing it's audience shot, it was becoming loose on the base of the crane, causing the jib to tilt and to become loose, creating a potential hazard. Therefore the directors came to the conclusion to remove this shot as it was proving problematic for me and dangerous for the camera incase the jib fell to the floor. This audience shot however is still being used, just instead now by a different camera operator instead of the jib.

I didn't manage to get images of my shots with the set as we were all quite busy plus they are reasonably the same minus the TV to panelists shot. However below are some images of the jib with the stage set up.

It's now only one day until our final shoot... Wish me luck! I will make another post once the shoot is over to let you know how it went.