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Uptempo Classical Music Playing Behind the Lens at the Scottish Parliament
This week, I was on a work placement with the Scottish Parliament Broadcasting department,
which gave me an insight into what is involved in producing a programme for Broadcast.
I went behind the scenes to find out more.
Douglas Carter, Holyrood Highlights Camera Operator and Editor In this room, we keep all the equipment to do with Broadcasting,
be it cameras or microphones or any of the audio visual equipment and on this wall,
we keep all of the cameras. We have three camera kits which are stored here at the moment.
There are two, DSR 500 here, each with their own tripod and sound recording kit
and wheels for moving them around and then over here
in this one, we keep the EX1 which is what I'm holding here
It's got it's own lighter tripod..
My placement began with an interview with local member of parliament, Michael Matheson, Scottish National Party
Andrew Johnston, Holyrood Highlights Producer and Presenter That was an interview for Holyrood Highlights. That was Michael Matheson who
is deputy convenor of the European and excel relations commitee.
Today, they were taking evidence from John Swiney who is the cabinet secretary
of finance and substantial growth. They were taking evidence on the
European's response to the financial crisis and basically asking how
the Scottish government were applying and using any grants or money that the European
Union are providing and whether or not they are using it effectively or not.
So, we have now done the interview and then we will go into the edit suite and
cut his interview up with actuality from the commitee.
One of the highlights of the week was being shown the main chamber and given an in depth look
at how the technical equipment operates
I learned alot about the auto cue and how it works and also how the cameras in the main chamber are linked together.
BBC's Alan Meldrum provided me with a great insight into the technicalities of how it all works.
Along with the team, I observed an interview with SNP, Andrew Welsh
who gave a gloom look on the economic status of the coming year.
at a time of recession, we have now reached record levels of borrowing,
someone puts the debt at somewhere over one trillion and up to one point five trillion.
So in otherwards, what has been created is a perfect financial storm
and that is like a tsunami waiting to hit Scotland in 2010, 2011
because our budget will be affected. It will be the tightest settlement that we have faced, dire straits financially.
My next stop was on the bottom floor of the Scottish Parliament's building.
So, yes all it was is that it came in too late.
Our construction industry has got to be helped so that there maybe are construction contracts that we cannot afford,
and we're taking evidence from financial. That's better.
Okay, it's Wednesday lunchtime, it is five to two, we have an interview in five minutes time
and we'll be speaking to Jeremy Purvis. Jeremy Purvis is a local Liberal Democrat member of the Scottish Parliament
and at five oclock tomorrow night, he will sponsor a members business debate and that debate
is on care homes, specifically private care homes and their accountability, if we have an issue with them,
can you call them to account.
So we're waiting here in the garden folly at the moment. If you pan to your right, you'll see
Douglas is all set up to do the interview. The garden folly can be a difficult environment to cope with as you can
see, there are different shafts of sunlight and there is also different audio levels to work out, especially with
woman walking past with high heels. So I'm the Producer, Presenter of the programme, this is our final item
that we're going to do which will be a teaser. The programme will be broadcast at half twelve tomorrow.
At the end of the programme, I'm going to say something along the lines of make sure you tune in at five oclock
tonight for this debate by Jeremy Purvis, it's own care home accountability, here's a quick teaser on it
and then we'll cut to these interview as we're doing now and it will say this is an important issue
and why. Okay, we're doing this as a teaser. Okay.
I discovered on my work placement that patience is required when preparing for interviews.
There are waiting periods where the crew have to prepare technically and be prepare for that crucial moment.
I'm editing together the footage that you saw me earlier filming with the small XD cam
and, this is for the weekly highlights package. This is an interview which we shot with the MSP, Jeremy Purvis
as you can see here. We filmed a shot of him talking with Andrew like this to set up, set the scene
and we'll record a voiceover which will play under that telling the audience what's happening.
Then you have the actual interview with Jeremy. Now, Andrew asked Jeremy two questions.
To bridge the gap between them. We have a shot of Andrew nodding, acknowledging what Jeremy says
which is a sort of trick in the industry which you can use to bridge two different shots together. So right now
I've assembled all of the interview on the timeline and I'm just inserting the shot of Andrew nodding to
bridge the gap.
Alan Meldrum, Holyrood Highlights BBC Audio and Technician As part of the Broadcast coverage of Parliament, each week we do a highlights package covering
some of the major items that are taking place in Parliament over the previous week.
In the past, it was purely done as VT packages edited one after another, we're trying to move
more to a studio type of environment and for this purpose, we're using one of the commitee rooms.
So Andrew will be interviewing one of the politicians about the major events over the past week.
Douglas Ring, Holyrood Highlights, BBC Audio and Visual Technician Well this is me rigging the sound kit for the live programme and basically we have a
couple of microphones, one for Andi which will be in this position and then one for the guest,
which will be over here. I've got his talkback which will plug his little earpiece into there and
he will be able to hear the gallery talkback from downstairs. Down here, we have a little monitor which will show the guest
the VT packages which we are going to play in and this will be the guest microphone here
and I'll try and keep it as unobtrusive as possible.
and Andrew is here and, yes, Andi is sounding fine.
So I'll be focussing on that camera so if you just look at me. We've got Alan and Alan is a student from
Jewel & Esk College, he's doing some of his own filming today.
Uptempo Classical Music Hello and welcome to Holyrood Highlights
as we look back over the week so far in the Scottish Parliament.
This week we welcome Mary Scanlon, the Scottish conservative member from Highlands and Islands, hello Mary.
Hi. Well the issue which has been dominating the news agenda, both at home and abroad is that of swine flu.
and yesterday the cabinet secretary for health updated Parliament on the situation in Scotland
as Douglas Carter reports.
Nicola Sturgeon told Parliament that a total of thirty two suspected cases of the swine flu virus have been
reported in Scotland but emphasised to the public that the risk is low.
that the government was prepared.
The highlight of the week for me was seeing the Television gallery and an operation of an edit
which requires a high level of of focus and skill.
The controls can be used to select a seat number, choose camera type number and enter.
Uptempo Humorous Music
You're not recording for sound, are you? Well it's true.
I wonder if Alan has worn his blue shirt? How many have you got?
I've got about three this colour, two of which are respectively, one which is really quite casual.
There's two days then at least that you could get caught out.