Children In Need 2014

Survivor photo

The Live Show

Children in Need 2014 was broadcast live from YSTV studios beginning around 8:11pm on November 15, 2014 and lasting approximately 2 hours. The live show included presenter challenges, a quiz show, live music, VTs and more. Four freshers, Matthew Ingram, Sarah Mesterton-Gibbons, Robyn Place, and Amy Wilson produced, directed, and presented the show. A grand total of £739 was raised online. The full live broadcast and the individual VTs are all available on ystv.co.uk.

Live Music

There were two musical acts, Nick Sephton sang two songs and two students from Pant Soc sang a song from their production of Dreaming Beauty. A separate stage area with a black backdrop and glittery lights was set up on the left wall of the studio to give them an area to perform in, and to make setup easier between acts.

Quiz Show

The live portion of CiN included an exciting quiz show, "Tell Me More," that involved two teams of faculty and students competing against each other. Who knew there were so many dinosaur names and periodic elements?

Presenter Challenges

For the first presenter challenge, Robyn and Sarah attempted to stuff as many marshmallows as possible into their mouths while saying "fluffy Pudsey"... this was hilarious to them, but maybe a bit painful for the audience watching at home. The second presenter challenge involved a special visit from Chef Helen (pronounced Hélène) and a blind taste testing of her creative concoctions. Some of the mysterious ingredients included tic tacs, vanilla pudding, and tomato paste.

Other Acts and Interviews

Magic Soc provided some light entertainment and mind-baffling tricks, and a member of Pant Soc was interviewed about their then upcoming production of Dreaming Beauty.

VTs

• Duckton Abbey

Amy and Hannah recording voices for Duckton Abbey

Did you say talking ducks? Ah, the magic of television. For this VT, Amy and Sarah wrote a script entirely consisting of duck puns that they managed to wring out of unsuspecting friends and family, and then filmed some ducks on campus, and finally recorded voiceovers.

• Children in Need Charity Spotlight: The Island

Sarah interviewing children at The Island's youth mentoring scheme

We wanted to showcase a local charity that receives funding from Children in Need, so we contacted three, and The Island replied. Matt and Sarah set up a time to go interview the charity director at his office. The main issues that came out of this, were that two cameras would have been better for getting an establishing shot and closeups at the same time, and that carrying heavy equipment downtown on the bus is not fun. We arranged a second date to visit one of the fortnightly youth clubs that The Island runs, in order to interview some of the children and get some b-roll. The main issue at this second shoot was that we brought the wrong camera battery with us, luckily we also had a DSLR that we were able to use instead. In the future, it would be good to triple check equipment before leaving the station. Also, it would be a good idea to bring a boom mic if you are interviewing children.

Robyn dancing with children at The Island

• Pudsey Quidditch

Sarah and Matt took two cameras and Pudsey to a game of Quidditch with the Hogyork Horntails and had a beary good time. Only one camera was used in the end, and both the warmup and the game were filmed, with Pudsey substituting for the Quaffle in many shots. There were not too many challenges...one camera worked well enough, and Matt did a good job tracking the fast play of the game. The team were really enthusiastic about having Pudsey play for the afternoon!

• YSTV 3Peaks

• Bear Banter

Amy wrote and filmed this VT in an afternoon, with her friends playing the various roles. It was a quick and easy shoot and edit, and a good opening to the show. Bear in mind that the puns are painfully funny!

• Luxo Jr. Band

Amy and Robyn recorded Luxo Jr. playing three songs and ended up using one of them for the show. The band recorded their song on their own sound equipment, which made the quality very nice.

Producers' Notes

The Good

This section is comprised of all the things that went really well, and that might be good for future producers to replicate.

• Do send lots of emails to your guests in the weeks leading up to the broadcast and keep them up-to-date on all the latest information (all the guests showed up on time!!!)

• Do schedule a rehearsal on the day of the broadcast for musical acts to test sound equipment, etc.

• Do make lots of detailed plans and schedules on large sheets of poster paper and plaster them all over your bedroom walls (hardly anything was forgotten, except for the graphics).

• Do have a weekly producers meeting and send lots of emails back and forth.

• Do ask more quests than you need in the beginning, because some of them will say no.

The Bad

Matt and Sarah were up editing until the wee hours of the morning the day of Children in Need

This section is composed of a list of things that didn't go so well, and that future producers of CiN might want to think about when they are planning their broadcast.

• Don't stay up until the wee hours of the morning the night before, editing the last VTs.

• Do eat something other than junk food!

• Don't wait till the day of the show to give the presenters the script, especially if the presenters are still madly editing VTs...

• Do train the presenters on how to work with autocue before the actual live broadcast! (Aside from Sarah and Robyn looking a bit uncomfortable with little words scrolling on a screen in front of them, the autocue also died a couple of times, so do have a backup script for the presenters to hold, also...make sure that you use tape to mark the on the autocue screen in the control room, to let the autocue operator know what portion of the text the presenters can see on their screen in the studio.)

• Do request graphics well in advance and not on the day of the show...so that people do not have to scramble to make them for you!

• Do have a backup plan for if a VT doesn't play, as in when the Three peaks videos suddenly stopped playing.

• Don't forget to check that you have the correct equipment when shooting on location (i.e. bring the right type of battery with you).

• Don't let your water bottles, clothing and papers be seen in shot on the floor or tables during the live show.

And the Ugly

There actually wasn't anything ugly...we just couldn't resist this joke!

Fundraising

There were two parts to the fundraising campaign for YSTV's Children in Need broadcast in 2014; the first was completing the Three Peaks Challenge (and filming it, which involved carrying a lot of heavy equipment), and the second was running around campus in Pudsey onesies and asking people to take selfies with Pudsey. See information under the VT category above for more about the Three Peaks Challenge. The "take a selfie with Pudsey" campaign was relatively successful...it involved a visit to The Glasshouse on Heslington East, and walking around Heslington East, visiting various housing blocks. Most people were willing to take a picture with Pudsey and donate some spare change. In the future, setting up a booth in a heavier-traffic area might be a good idea. And maybe not asking people in their pyjamas nursing hangovers to have their picture taken!

We created a Just Giving fundraising page (https://www.justgiving.com/YSTV-CiN2014/) for the Three Peaks Challenge, and raised £609.

We also created a Just Giving fundraising page for the live broadcast (https://www.justgiving.com/YSTV-Childreninneed2014/), modelled after the one created for the 2013 CiN broadcast. There was some confusion for our viewers with the 2013 Just Giving page, and we received two donations towards the 2014 total on the 2013 page (https://www.justgiving.com/YSTV-ChildrenInNeed/). We raised £90 total, including £15 collected from our adventures around campus in the Pudsey onesies.

The grand total raised was £739 including the two donations to the 2013 page.

Press and Publicity

Sarah and Robyn taking selfies with Pudsey

Facebook and Twitter served as the sole means of publicity for this broadcast. YSTV members shared posts about the Just Giving site and live broadcast through social media, and numerous posts to the YSTV Twitter and Facebook accounts were made in the days leading up to the broadcast, and on the day of.

Credits

• Producers: Matthew Ingram, Sarah Mesterton-Gibbons, Robin Place, and Amy Wilson
• Director: Amy Wilson
• Presenters: Sarah Mesterton-Gibbons and Robin Place
• Quiz Show Presenter: Alex Pusey
• Vision Mixer: Jai Rodgers
• VT Op: Sam Nicholson
• Sound Engineer: Robert Drane
• Camera Ops: Joella Panthradil, Ben Pearson, Suzanne Pearson andConnie Maunder
• Graphics Op: Kenric Yuen
• Autocue Op: Grace Winpenny
• Floor Manager: Lloyd Wallis
• Special Thanks to: Helen Hobin, Heather Marsden, Dominic Watt, Luxo Jr., Chris Wall, Alfie Lanham-Brown, The Island, PantSoc, Harry Potter Muggle Society, MagicSoc, Nick Sephton, and James Taylor
• Voiceovers for Duckton Abbey VT: Matthew Ingram, Amy Wilson, Robyn Place, Sarah Mesterton-Gibbons, Hannah H., and Sinead Barret
• Pudsey: As himself
• Production Consultant: Helen Hobin
• Technical & Computing: Calum Brookes, Tom Cheyney, Peter Eskdale, David Heaton, Sam Nicholson, Robert Walker and Lloyd Wallis
• Riggers: Rachel Burns, and who else???Unverified or incomplete information
• VT Camera: Andrew Griffiths
• Graphics & Animation: Peter Eskdale
• Editors: Amy Wilson and Sarah Mesterton-Gibbons
• Social Media: Emily Torricelli