Today was the first real taping day for Mountaineer Playbook, and it went a lot better than I think anyone was anticipating it would. There are many little pieces of the puzzle that need to align perfectly for this show to go the way it does, and much of that work is done behind the scenes, whether that is writing the script, doing writing conferences, fixing packages, or just marking the papers for cues.
To start, everything – for me at least – began after the entirety of the class were sent to do their packages. It’s a bit of a waiting game for me until Wednesday when I can dive in with the writing conferences and see what we’re working with. Sitting in on writing conferences for five hours back-to-back with minimal time in between is very tiring. However, it does give me a chance to meet with most of my peers and give them some things to think about and improve on before they hand in their packages the following day.
Thursday through Saturday is probably the most time-consuming chunk of this position. Thursday is another waiting game for me since the deadline for everyone’s packages is 9 p.m. After 9 p.m., it's crunch time for me. I meet with all three professors alongside my associate producer and while we sit there and watch every package, we give feedback and take note of what our professors would like our classmates to fix for their packages. That process, this time at least, took about four hours, with both my associate producer and I going to bed at 2:00 a.m. after we had an idea of what the rundown was going to look like. From then on, it was 10 hours combined between Friday and Saturday of me writing the script, timing everything and figuring out little kinks as we went along.
Since this was the first show, we were a bit short timing-wise, and I had to make the adjustments on the go. I opted to add in a reader about the MLB Postseason, since that is something very relevant right now. From 1 p.m. Friday afternoon to 6 p.m. Saturday night, all I was doing was working on the script. It was very important to me that I chunked the script in a way that I could stop at a good point. Had I not stopped myself after finishing the B Block, I would have stayed awake as long as I needed to in order to finish the show. By allowing myself to stop and walk away, it gave me the chance to reset and come back to it with fresh eyes, and I was able to catch a few of my mistakes.
After all was said and done, I sent the script and rundown to Harley, my associate producer, to give it one more glance before I handed it in. She very graciously gave me a very meticulous set of fixes that I was able to fix, and I also saw more issues that needed to be smoothed out.
The next time I allowed myself to think about the script was Monday when I sat down with all three professors, and they gave me feedback. It is very scary knowing that I was doing something by only referencing past shows and rundowns. But, even with the 122 bullet points of feedback that I was given, those are fixes to look out for next time. During anchor rehearsals on Monday, it also gave me a better understanding of all of the cues, the packages and the pace of my anchors. We were able to practice more on Tuesday, where the director, Mark, and I ran through the script with the talent and did our vocal cues so it wasn’t as foreign when we hit the control room on Wednesday.
Today, Wednesday, October 2, was taping day. Our first time having the control room under our direction…or until after the first take that Professors Marra and Scatterday ran themselves to show us how it should be. After that, I was seriously itching to just get this show going because I knew that our anchors, other talent and crew were skilled enough to do all of this perfectly.
During the first taping that we did, I worked with Mark to help him be on time with his cues because that was, in turn, how I cued the on-air talent. If he was not on point with those cues, everything would be thrown off. By the second take we did, everything was good, and I feel confident that as we do more shows, it will be easier to remember all of these cues and it will be second nature.
For the next show, I am looking forward to putting together a more complex script with better packages and more dynamic images.