Watched Blue Peter on iplayer and seems that even more elements of Christmas past have returned. The advent crown albeit with health and safety LED candles has been present , after the main titles there was brass band Good King Wenceslas along with a selection of cards, the crib was back , the choir came into the studio and there was a silver ship at the end ( a more modern version ). Well done to them. Think it's a shame it's not given a higher profile on CBBC and having seen it a few times think it deserves its second programme a week again. It seems the quality has returned albeit presented in a way for a modern audience.
All those elements have been there for many years. Only the silver ship was dropped last year, but the new version premiered this year.
There were a number of years when most of the traditional elements were dropped - remember the gospel choir? Certainly don't remember the crib being out last year.
For the last few years they haven't done their own appeal per se but instead been part of Children in Need, coming up with specific fund-raising ideas, getting the audience to write in to say what they're doing which they put on a map in the studio and running reports on where the money goes. So there is still an appeal in that sense, but they don't run it.
The Crib has been back a few years, but this was the first time, I think, we've had the Christmas card montage since its imperial phase. As mentioned, it was 2007 they dropped all the traditional features, but in recent years they've gradually reintroduced more and more of them.
There was another bit of Blue Peter past on the show as well... (apologies for the photo-of-the-screen pic)
Sorry to bring this thread back, but there was an interesting Blue Peter spin-off this morning. Last Thursday's show was directed by Barney, a bit of a classic Blue Peter feature because I remember Simon Thomas doing it a decade or so ago and it's featured in one of the books. What's interesting this time though is that at 9am this morning on CBBC they showed the programme again, but from Barney's perspective with a camera in the gallery throughout. Just like election night on Sky Arts!
I would have mentioned this sooner but I didn't notice until they mentioned it on Thursday's show (which I didn't watch until Friday). On iPlayer, though, obviously.
Also interesting to see the HQ galleries (well at least for the BP studio) are on the ground floor right next to the studio floor, London Studios-style.
There seems to be lots of camera cuts and stuff happening whilst he just sits there and says nothing. I what Biddy Baxter would have made of it.
In the UK very few directors are annoying enough to call every cut. If they are happy with camera configuration and what the vision mixer is doing, they will often only call shots if they specifically want a shot, or if they are about to move a camera and don't want the VM to cut to it, or to warn the VM not to cut to it. In a well directed gallery, if the director has done their job properly, it should be relatively quiet. If cameras know what is expected of them in a sequence, and they are doing it, and the VM knows the order of shots or the way the director wants a sequence covered, and are doing it, the director doesn't usually need to say anything. They can then concentrate on watching what is going on, adding the odd bit of input to improve things.
And knowing the VM sat next to Joel - you probably don't need to say very much to get a brilliant show.
Galleries would be very noisy and boring if a director called every shot. Why bother to have a vision mixer if all you are using them for is as a voice recognition control system for the VM like Siri...
Beware watching behind the scenes videos of US TV shows. They work very differently to UK galleries. In the US, most TDs will only cut 'as directed' - with the director calling every single shot "Ready 2, take 2, Ready 3, take 3" etc. To a UK director's eyes that's a recipe for late cuts... There are some union issues with this, as well as with PAs shot calling on music, which is also routine in the UK.
Quote:
There is no urgency anywhere. It was never like that in the days of Stewart Morris or Michael Hurll.
Thank goodness... For their time, they were legends. But TV production has evolved since then.
There is a time and a place for urgency in a gallery, but you can't run a normal gallery like that all the time. It's often far from the best way of getting the best work from talent and crew. And if you always work with 'urgency' - when do people know it's really urgent?
A few questions, is Blue Peter live? Has it ever been live? I didn't hear any calls of "on air" or "off air" so that got me thinking about it.
Secondly, union issues with Directors calling shots like that? How would that be an issue? As long as they aren't self-opping the VM, surely that's exactly their job?
