KTV's Day Out in London - 30/10/2013
So the proud members of KTV took a trip this Wednesday down to the studios of London to take a walk into the behind the scenes look of how they make everything behind the box come together, as well as being a part of the wonderful audience who Matthew Wright himself claimed was the best group of students he ever had visiting the set, score one for Kent Television! That’s right, the first step was being a part of the studio audience of The Wright Stuff, the famous show on Channel 5 that discusses recent news headlines and take public opinions as well as a panel of guests discussing said topics at hand. Being a part of this event provided us with wonderful experience of media and technology and we’d recommend anybody to an opportunity like this who is interested in working in the TV business as Matthew Wright answered many important questions we asked such as experience gained during his career, advice he’d give to people interested in TV and even how press and criticism is handled (there’s no such thing as bad press).
As we then took a trip into the gallery and saw how every bit of research and communication tool was being used to make the show to which we had a talk from the director himself who discussed what his job involved, who he gets to work with and where he gets to work (he was at the Olympics!!).
We learned many things from this experience about from how much work the job involves for all parties involved as it’s a 5 day a week role to undertake but with interesting and engaging work to be delivered, so the tour itself of Princess Studios was well presented and informative with what we can bring to our own range of content.
Next was our tour around the BBC which gave us an outline of the different studios they use for news, radio etc. and how many researchers have to working long hours, but they work in the largest newsroom in europe so thats a bonus. While on the subject of research and news headlines, the BBC like to give people a taste of what it’s like in the presenter’s chair; we had a Mark and Kathleen discussing global events while our dear friend Barnaby gave everyone the most accurate and enthusiastic weather report seen in history.
We then had a talk about the history of the BBC starting with the founder John Reith, leading to how the Queen was the mark of the promotion for television and eventually to how Top Gear is the most watched show on the BBC network globally, a nice insight into how the BBC has evolved in the last hundred years.
The final part of the tour was to look at how Radio Drama works; from the sound effects, to the actors, to the theatre stage with all the microphones and mixers set up, and then to our own test recording of a rough script given between us which involved a scary setting, evil butlers and delayed shrieks. All of which was extremely fun to get up and do, and looking at the microphones, now I know what I want for christmas.
So overall between us all we can definitely that this whole day taught us a lot about the media industry and the direction we can move to in our own productions.
