Studio Production: Rehearsal Progress

For the past few weeks we have been spending Tuesday with Del Brown who has been carrying out work shops and spending our rehearsal time with us. Many of us have never worked in a working studio environment so this has been a totally new experience. For the production we all have very important and key roles. Working in a studio is a very different experience to working on location which means that the time we have with Del is vital for the success of the show and our learning experience along the way. There are several studio roles including Vision Mixing and Floor Managing that none of us have done before. Throughout these rehearsals we have all been given the opportunity to try out everyone's role and understand the demands of it.
For the first few weeks, we had specialist work shops in some of the technical roles such as camera work and vision mixing. I particularly enjoyed the vision mixing work shop, which allowed us to all have a turn at cutting to a piece of music. We had to follow a script and a count to cut the cameras in time with the music. I found this to be challenging at first but enjoyable as it was something i'd never experienced before.
For another workshop, we rotated roles so that everyone had a chance to take on everyone's role. This was a really interesting experience as it allowed us to understand the demands of each role and how pressured they are. I was surprised that I enjoyed Directing. It is very high pressured as there are a lot of cues to remember, however, I found it to be really exciting. Another role I thought I would like was Floor Managing. However, this role I found to be quite challenging. It involved a lot of communication between the gallery and the set floor which I found rather confusing when several people are trying to communicate with you at once.
For today's workshop/rehearsal we have been undertaking our own roles. I think that having as much rehearsal time as possible is very important to ensure that we all feel as practised as we can. As a camera operator, I feel comfortable using the camera to a good standard as we have used them in other units. However, there are other demands including ensuring the cameras all match up and look identical. This was a totally new experience and demand for all of us, which we found rather challenging at first.
In reflection, I feel like I have learnt several new skills from the work shops and feel relatively confident in the rehearsals we have completed so far. Each rehearsal so far, we have made a few mistakes so I think that the week of the recording, the rehearsal time will be vital to ensure that the crew feel as prepared as possible.