For one of our productions, we were asked to film a live performance of the opera “Patience”, that was going to be performed at the Theatre Royal in York. This meant that the production was not under our control and due to this being a multi- camera project the recording would have to be live cut.  During this project, the production crew would include a large number of members that would have to work together as a team in a professional work environment, limited to a specific time constraint and project scope.

Once again, we were given the choice to choose our specific role for this task. I decided I wanted a large role in this production, and chose to direct this live task along with one other director from the group. With this role, meant I had a high responsibility on the recording night. I was based within the control room choosing shots during the live cut with a guide made beforehand due to going to a couple of rehearsals of the opera. I learnt this to be my role from “Studio and outside broadcast camerawork, a guide to multi camerawork production” (Peter Ward, 2001). ” The information from the director and the responses from other members of the crew is the lifeblood of any mulit-camera production” (page 40-41).However, my role, as director, appeared to get confused by others with the role of the producer as I had many other crew members asking me questions that were not my choice to make. Because of this I felt as though the 2 producers were not working together sufficiently enough and meant I had more pressure than what I should have put on me. The process for the production would have been a lot smoother if the producers had worked together and communicated more with all production members, including the directors.

During the pre-production stage of the live task, the preparation was shared between the two directors. This made the process easier as two opinions helped make decision making quicker, and creating a script with visualised camera shots (appendix 5) on was done quicker with two minds. There was no clash of decisions between the two directors and we shared responsibility equally. After going to rehearsals, we created meetings with the other cast members in order to share the information we had learnt. We went for a location recce at the theatre and received a floor plan from the cast of the opera to understand the layout of the stage. We provided the crew with copies of the script of “Patience” and informed them of which cast members of the opera would be on stage at which point in time, and which direction on the stage they would be appearing from. This was successful in allowing the 3 camera crews to be aware of which cast member would be on stage and when, and who they would need to track. I also created a document that showed a picture and title for each main cast member (appendix 6), allowing the camera crews to know what each character would be wearing to make identification of characters easier. A detailed script giving an indication of what shots would be needed from the camera crews (appendix 5) was also given by the directors which was successful in telling cameras when they would need to change shot and how long they had to do so.

One problem we had during the process of this live production was some members of our recording crew not taking their role seriously and it appeared they would forget the professionalism of this production. Camera crews had to be changed in order for there to be no disturbance on the camera or sound during recording as well as certain crew member not turning up to some scheduled meetings. This made trying to share information with the entire crew difficult and some communication got lost due to this. A call sheet (appendix 7) was therefore created for the night in order to keep everything under control.

This production could have been made more successful if certain crew members followed their role more clearly and dedicated more of their time to the task and meetings.