As Live: Game Over!

What a week!

On Monday CAFT arrived at the scene dock with the set. Being in bits it was underwhelming but we had faith. They worked on it in the scene dock while we all worked on the paper work upstairs.

On Tuesday, Danny our lighting technician arrived and immediately got to work putting the lights up. There were so many! I wasn't expecting so many. He seemed to understand that we didn't know how to address lighting but we explained the game and I gave him my movement maps and he planned for every eventuality during the show. In the afternoon the set moved into the studio and was painted and only had a few finishing touches to complete on wednesday morning. This allowed Danny to fine tune the lighting. We had initially asked for colour but he wisely left the colour out of the lights until we had seen it against the set. It turned out that with the colours of the set (red and yellow) we didn't need coloured lights. It looked FANTASTIC! It was so amazing! I had never thought we could get a set that looked that good but CAFT pulled it all together. A few things weren't quite appropriate for television but only minor things like the buzzers and the team signs. The signs were lovely but too theatrical as we couldn't see them through the lens and the buzzers which were lights, couldn't be seen lighting up on camera. These are things we all learnt from though!

Danny also said that in the future the spacing between the panels and the background set is something to think about for lighting. Because we had the panels so close to the back of the set we had less shadows and it made the key lighting difficult. I don't know what key lighting means but I assume it's something to do with the light on the face compared to the light on the background and I guess a nice sharp, dark shadow makes the contrast easier?? No idea.

Wednesday saw the completion of the set and the arrival of Ant- our presenter! While Dean had done an excellent job filling that role for rehearsals it made it so real and pulled everything together when Ant arrived. He instantly filled the shoes of the landlord and gave it his all from go. He made great suggestions when we weren't sure on lines and he was happy and responsive to directions.
At the end of the day we rehearsed blind drunk for THE FIRST TIME! madness. It went better than I thought, adjustments had to be made but they were to be resolved the next day.
Earlier that day we had had the horror news that 2 members of the fox team had dropped out. We also lost Russell from the Dog and Gun team! Dun dun dun. However, Jane was a star and knowing the Fox well, she got her other half to fill in and some one else too. She also helped us gather more audience members for their team the next day.

THURSDAY! The big day!
In the morning I got all the cameras sorted, iris' and light balance. Positioning and briefing. Then the team members arrived with Ant. They got into costume and we were ready to rehearse at 10.30. We rehearsed Blind Drunk twice and resolved any issues. Then we went through the entire show.
Before we knew it, it was lunch time. At about 1 I went back into the gallery to get my head into the game. We were ready to go at 2! With the audience in we got started early. The first run of Twister didn't go very well. So because we had time we did it again and it went much better. Then we filmed Beer Pong which was fantastic!! The pong ball collectors did an excellent job of staying off camera after my briefing them before we started and it ran smoother than ever before!
I then got some audience shots of various reactions. They were fantastic! Considering we didn't have as many as we all imagined they sounded and looked great! And they all seemed to enjoy it which I am really happy about.
We then ran through the rest of the sequences. They went ok until the end. We had to one retake and a few pick ups and then it was OVER!

I am so proud of everyone. The first years really pulled out all the stops for the final record and it was really excellent. Our gallery team all stayed calm under pressure and it went so well!

We got GREAT responses from our professionals - Paul (sound), Danny (lights), Alastair (our go to guy) and Ant (presenter) were all really impressed and said they had seen professionals do worse jobs than we had done.

I think we managed to be really efficient! In all honesty we got this show going in much less time than we were given but we managed to create something better than we imagined. I can't wait to see the final thing!

Congratulations Dylan for a great idea which we could all work with and enjoy creating.
Thank you to Danny, Paul, Alastair and Ant.
Thank you to CATF who created an amazing set and the costumes were great too.
Thank you to all the first years, you guys were awesome and it was great to get to know you all a bit better.
Hans was invaluable. We really couldn't have done it without his insights and his help with the studio-y lingo and documentation and we couldn't have done it without his consistent positivity in us and the production.
Also of course thank you to Helen and Simon who helped us along the way.
(This is pretty much how we spent the half an hour after wrapping, thanking everyone but I wanted to reiterate thanks)

I am so exhausted!