Show Light

Saturday was our first day at BBC. My role was in the sound department, working together with Benoit and Graeme. Our supervisors (Corrina and Alan) were quite nice and I feel we learned something from them, just by helping and watching for 2 days. The audio set up takes an awful lot of time, for instance, we had to go on the roof and pass down cables to whoever was plugging them into the heavy speakers which were hanging on hooks. Also we probably used at least 30 XLRs, on various mikes. The first day was just to set up everything, and everyone was calm and friendly. Afterwards, there was a small dinner at the Cafe Bar, where I met some students from Croatia. One of them was a cinematographer and we discusses mainly the decrease in the use of film these day.
Sunday felt busier when Show light started. As well as passing the mike to the speakers in the audience at Q&A, I also helped Alan to adjust the mike levels to each presenter wearing a personal mike, also the hand held mike levels. The audio studio in BBC is amazing, they've got such an impressive equipment which at first seems so difficult to figure out how to use, but later on it gets simple. I was quite happy doing audio for 2 days, even though I didn't have many breaks, simply because they were used to chase down presenters and mike them up.
On Monday I was on camera from the morning till the afternoon. I changed just 2 cameras, with the main focus on steady CU, MS and WS. Very simple, given that we always had people to assist us with using the equipment. I presume the only difficult camera to use was the hand held one, which I didn't have time for, but it's quite heavy and sometimes challenging to get audience reactions when the audience was rather bored and asleep at some of the talks. What funny moments those were! So camera was great! I am looking forward to see the new equipment that the RSAMD will purchase for next year. We also met Roberto Shaefer, a cinematographer who assumed we are much more experienced in lighting than we actually are, but he also told us about the various jobs he had when he first started working in film. I quite enjoyed his presentation on Quantum of Solace and all the lights he used for some scenes. It sounded completely mad, but with such budget he could afford it.
Tuesday was our last day at BBC. I didn't want to leave, I quite like it there! Derrek, the director was very friendly with us. On that day, I was doing vision- basically, playing with a few racks to control the beam and opacity of the lights in studio A. My first 1 and a half hours were absolutely boring and I was struggling to stay awake at the techy talks. Thanks god, it got better later on, and we had a good laugh in the vision studio about the camera men's struggling to find interested faces in the audience.

As a whole, I loved the BBC experience that we had at Showlight. In terms of the content of the event, I don't think it's our specialism, because the practitioners invited were mainly working on concerts, advertising and theater productions, or mainly lighting buildings. I am sure the equipment could be applied in the field of film too, but I particularly was not familiar with all the equipment they mentioned. Despite this, I am glad we had the chance to talk to a few cinematographers. I hope that BBC assistants again!