Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Behind the Scenes at Channel 11

This past Friday, after the amazing time I had at the Phoenix Police Academy, I went to Phoenix's Channel 11 for a taping of Phoenix City Council On the Issues with Phoenix Councilman Claude Mattox, State Senator Nelson and Phoenix's Government Relations Director Karen Peters. The topic was the proposed state budget and the effects it, along with the temporary sales tax vote this May, would have on Phoenix.

Dave (my co-intern) and I got to go in the studio prior to the taping. The set is actually a green screen and there isn't really a lot in the studio. It had the hollow feeling of an industrial garage. What was really fascinating was when we went into the control room prior to and during the taping.

Prior to the taping the three participants had to be "synchronized" with (I'm not sure what the technical term is) the green screen so that the colors they were wearing were matched with the green screen. Without doing this matching they people onscreen disappear into the green screen.

Since the show is basically unscripted it was really neat observing the production crew trying to both anticipate and react to the onscreen participants' comments. Whether it was changing cameras or figuring out which graphics to display it was almost like listening to the team communications for a NASCAR crew.

While the final product will undoubtedly look like a seamless conversation between three colleagues the behind-the-curtain viewpoint revealed something totally different.

3 comments:

  1. Pretty cool. I'm glad we were able to do that. It was different from what I had anticipated. I figured most of the things they did were added after the fact but they did most of the editing in real time.

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  3. Must have been action-packed. Channel 11 is a great way to educate about the governmental proceess and create a level of understanding and transparency for citizens.

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