Our group studio segment had twenty crew members which helped with organisation as roles were assigned to everyone in our group, I was originally tasked as lighting technician but after our assistant producer failed to show for our first group meeting I had taken charge of this role any other crew members that didn’t show had their roles taken over as we did not want to waste any time or depend on people to take senior roles who were not reliable. My responsibilities included taking minutes from each meeting, setting deadlines for pieces of work necessary to our production (such as scripts/dress codes) and guiding the floor crew through camera compositions and making everyone aware of the time limits they had (countdowns).
There were a few points where I had to help certain crew members out with their jobs, which was not a burden for me but helped the crew understand their roles better and as a result perform better, and as an assistant producer my responsibilities were limited during pre-production which gave me more time to help out other crew members. Taking the front foot at various points helped the crew stay focused and also helped make my role a lot easier to manage (Nick Bamford: Directing Television; Taking Charge).
For one element of our production, the logo, I had outsourced to a family member who is studying graphics in Hull University (@RyanCarterGD) , this not only meant that we could save time by not creating one ourselves but also that we had a quality logo which looked even more professional, as nobody in the crew had previously studied graphic design. The producer in our crew carried out all of the necessary risk assessments and call sheets fully investigating any risks to the crew.
I was tasked with manning the PA system in the gallery, my responsibilities included time management; camera angles and zooms; and conveying messages from the director. Difficulties I faced when carrying out my role would probably have to be communication as the PA system I was using cut out during the production at points, I tackled this by talking to the crew in person before the studio went live, this ensured any information such as camera movement and countdown to the start of recording were known. I had also aided the lighting crew by giving suggestions and experimenting with the overhead lighting early on, to give them a third perspective and more ideas to help them craft their lighting style. If I had to do this project again I would definitely put more preplanning into props and set design as we did take this under consideration but it could’ve been improved even more with the inclusion of higher quality props, rather than the grass floor and mushroom heads, which did fit the style but could be even better.