An Afternoon With The BBC...

I arrived over at Bath Uni at 1.30 and was briefed with the other 3 people on the "Production" team with events co-ordinator at the university Kate Pizzey who then introduced us to some of the BBC staff and specifically a woman called Steph (I didnt catch her last name). She took us over to the GB Wheelchair Basketball Team and two of the BBC Points West presenters (Will Glennon and John Maguire)  in order to sort out our role for the show. They were preparing for a section of the show where the "amateur" news presenters would take on the professional wheelchair basketballers.

What surprised me at the start was how close and friendly everyone on the BBC team was from the presenters to the crew thay were all very friendly and on first name terms.

At around 2.30pm they began the dress rehearsal, another thing I noticed here was that the flexibility on the show. Though they had a set script and quite strict timings, it turned out setting up the wheelchair basketball set took longer than the script allowed and as it was a live show the presenters had to come up with more to fill the time.

When it came to the real show our group were assigned the extra task of clearing the set after the choir sung during the opening. Though our "starring" role was setting up the wheelchair basketball as smoothly as possible behind the presenting of another award.

Though our role wasnt very big it was really interesting just to be there, see the amount of work and people needed to make the show run smoothly. They had big screens at either end and I picked up on the interview shots used that we learnt earlier on the course. Technically speaking too it all ran very smoothly in terms of correct mic output. At times some of the levels were low but that was mainly when the presenter was sharing the microphone with the interviewee.

I feel like I got a lot out of observing the day and would love to be a part of further productions like this.

Pictures of all the winners can be found here on the BBC West website and a video round up of the show can be found here.