Elections 2016

Elections 2016
Watch Online
Genre:	Events Coverage
First Broadcast:	06/02/2016
Last Broadcast:	20/02/2016
Producer(s):	Peter Eskdale (60SM) TBC

60 Second Manifestos

With no sign of anyone coming forward to produce Elections, Peter Eskdale stepped in to take on production of the 60 Second Manifestos. Because of how successfully run last year's filming weekend was, the same model was adopted again with minor improvements.

The green screen was set up in the studio, lit by an array of new light fixtures hanging on the still rather new lighting grid, along with a video village area in the corner of the room on lighting desk. The plasma screen was set up behind the camera to show candidates the time remaining, and a pair of condenser mics on a stand was positioned in front of the candidates to capture audio.

Learning from last year's space management problems, G/020 was booked to serve as the editing room for the whole weekend. This year was the first time since YSTV re-adopted chroma-keyed manifestos that Lloyd Wallis and Tom Cheyney's desktops were not used. Instead, the Edit PCs and Peter's laptop were initially set up to edit the manifestos.

Candidate briefing took place on the Monday of Week 4, with paper bookings scrapped in favour of using http://youcanbook.me to schedule filming slots (both systems were used last year, with the production team manually entering bookings at a later time). As before, slots were 15 minutes long and available all over the weekend, as well as limited slots on Friday afternoon. It was made clear to candidates that no further time slots would be made available, unless there were extenuating circumstances. The candidates were also shown the on-demand hit graphs for last year's manifestos, in an attempt to highlight how important filming one was to their campaigns. A series of emails throughout the week (from both YSTV and YUSU) were sent to remind candidates to book their slot.

Thanks to rebranding of Elections by YUSU, manifestos no longer featured a background coloured to match the position the candidate was running for. Better green screen lighting and a simpler Premiere workflow led to manifestos being edited in about three minutes. It was discovered early on that the audio levels on many of the candidates needed some manual fine-tuning. In an attempt to remain consistent in levelling, this job was given solely to Grace Winpenny, leading to a bottleneck in workflow before a video could be encoded.

A dedicated server had initially been set up in the control room to export the completed videos. However, it was discovered early on that the chroma-keying process used was capped at two CPU threads, leading to export times in excess of 30 minutes for a 1 minute video. Due to inadequate hardware, Edit 1 was too slow to edit the chroma-keyed videos. However, it was found to be much faster at exporting the videos (about ten minutes), so was reassigned to that task for the rest of Saturday afternoon. Sam Willcocks later brought in his desktop, and that was also used to export the queue of videos.

Late Saturday afternoon, it was discovered that many of the exported videos had sound issues - some were missing background audio, some had doubled voices. The problem was narrowed down to video exported by Edit 1, so it was decided that all the faulty videos would be re-exported on Sam's desktop, with Edit 1 used for checking and uploading the final copies.

Full Time Officers were given additional tasks to do during and after their slot compared to previous year. YSTV was asked by URY to film the candidates doing turns to camera in front of the green screen, so that they could be used in a montage introducing the candidates for FTO position on results night. URY also set themselves up in YourSpace with a borrowed Kenobi and the remaining two AC-90 cameras, and collected FTO candidates after their slots to have a light-hearted interview - which would be played out on results night as filler material for the stage show.

Most candidates turned up for their slots, with some cancelling their bookings for unknown reasons. Surprisingly some of the candidates who didn't book at all, or cancelled without rebooking, were running for FTO positions. This would cause later issues for the candidate montages and interviews for the results night stage show. Despite being told several times not to (or at least e-mail ahead), some candidates still chose to wear green - often entering the studio saying "I know you didn't want us to wear green, but...". In other words, business as usual. Of particular note was a pair running for Women's Officer who had brought along rabbits, which they wanted to hold during their video. This was declined (by Peter, who felt really bad afterwards!) because of the unknown quantity that is live animals in a hot and brightly-lit TV studio, and it wasn't known whether the room agreement even allowed animals.

There a few small casualties in the lighting department: On Saturday evening, the one trico that still did green started flickering, and then died all together. This was believed to be a heat-related issue, and it was turned off for the rest of the day. It had recovered by the start of filming on Sunday, and worked fine for the rest of the weekend with careful management. Also on Sunday, Anthony spotted that the bulb was bulging in one of the asymmetric floods. Fortunately this was found before a huge block of filming in the afternoon.

Overall, the weekend was fairly relaxed, with a lot of downtime for the production team. Whilst on Saturday some crew members did not leave until midnight (when the last of the days videos had been uploaded), Sunday morning and early-afternoon were mostly free - with the production team going to Courtyard for lunch. There was a flurry of candidates between 2pm and 5pm on the Sunday, with exporting on hold until Grace could come in to level the audio. The team eventually left at 11pm on Sunday night.

In total, of the 49 candidates, 43 recorded a manifesto over the weekend. Four candidates failed to/chose not to book a slot, and two unable to record due to illness. Over 71,000 views were recorded between the release of the manifestos and Results Night, with a peak of 17,500 on the first day. The manifestos were embedded on YUSU and Nouse's websites alongside candidate profiles, and were promoted on YSTV social media on a daily basis.

Production Team

• Producer - Peter Eskdale
• Editors - Kenric Yuen and Peter Eskdale
• Audio - Grace Winpenny
• Greeters - Rachel Burns and Sam Willcocks
• Video Village/QA - Iona McEwan
• Server Wrangler - Anthony Williams
• Turned up just for fun - Rachel Steen

FTO Debates

Similar to previous year, it's hosted in RKC. This year it's chair by a Alumni which was the RAG president when it's a full time position. This year YUSU had bought some extra mic stand which similar from the one YSTV currently own to ensure there is enough for the presidential debate, those mic stand subsequently become YSTV property.

In terms of difference, this year when presenter introduce the candidates, a special info graph is used. The info card basically is a short video play on CaspeCG where the turns of the Cadidate in 60SM are used. The transition are set as slide to right, with the same background color it look natural as a fast panning shot.

We are also able to put our Banner onto the Debate desk, giving YSTV a lot exposure.

In terms of improvement, considering the projector screen often over-expose the shot, it's worth while to consider to set the kneeling of the cameras higher, or comunicate with YUSU about the screen usage as well as Lighting.

Trival

• Photo of the debate subsequently are posted of YUSU screen as Society of the week - Debate Society....with YSTV banner on it

Production Team

Need double checkUnverified or incomplete information

• Producer: Kenric Yuen, Peter Eskdale
• Presenter: Hector Macduff, Jenny Cao, Kate Whitaker
• Scripting: Charlotte Williams along with presenters
• Vision Mixer: Lee Way Lin
• Guest: Alex Light, Ben Leatham, Tom Butler
• Graphic Op: Freya Burgess
• Technical Assistant: Sam Willcocks
• Live Camera Op: Rachel Burns, Maddie Scarlett, Iona McEwan

Election Result Night

Election result night similar from last year, was

General

-Com System -YUSU miscommunicate with doorsafe -contact point

Studio space

-URY YSTV space arrangment

Front of House

Presenter

Presenting is handled by URY, however they discuss this during the feedback section. Seeing YSTV might eventually want to take a larger role in result night I will leave this here as well - Kenric

Selection and development process

Presenter will require a lot of commitment and need to start to pin down the choice early with longer process. With the feedback come in there is a few complain about all male presenter (mostly because the "three white male" joke). It's suggested that diversity of the member need to be consider as well. However the fact that the presenter is highly involve in the development of the event as a whole had been a blessing as that allow presenter to react quickly and understand the situation when delay is happen, especially when the comm system is not holding up.

Presentation

There is criticism about the presentation style being disjointed. At the beginning of the show, a lot of edging joke is told, then when the result are release mostly dead-reading only. (part of it is the graphic fault) There is also concern about positioning in general. During result release, the presenter were standing on both side of the screen which might be distracting to look at 3 different position at the same time. Also when the dialog is passed to next presenter, often people will lost sight of the current presenter due to presenter had been changing position all the time. Similarly it's hard to predict where will the next person to speak. The spit in position had cause extra problem when inviting winner on the the stage where candidate not sure which presenter to approach or where to stand in for the camera. The major suggestion is have all three presenter stand on the same side, or fixed position with elevated platform and podium to direct audience and winner where should they look at or stand.

There is also discussion of which media should the Front of House serve. Currently we are considering both TV live presentation, Radio content as well as event itself. There is multiple session is shown not working on all three at the same time, like Push-up with Grace Clarke, or camera in audience not working on radio. It's conclude that the people in the venue should be the first priority, it's important that both YSTV and URY have their presenter ready for section that not working for them, however that will mean more planning and timing correction will be needed.

The presenter felt that they can't grab the attention of the audience, they think it might due to the fact that people come here to support their friend not really the show. But the other suggest they were listening during some of the position.

URY had discuss about should URY continue to handle front of house due to the negativity of the social media. However the counter argument is the social media is inherently negative, and other student media are generally hostile to URY and YSTV as competitor. Also YSTV is taking more attribution on credit and blame due to medium. Still it's a lot of effort to plan and keep up the show, but due to YUSU consistently screw up the show, it's suggested we might as well continue to do it.

In additional there is question about professionalism when interviewing PTO on stage Alex Light ask them their name and position they just won, which didn't happen for FTO. YSTV stream also have the same problem.

There is people felt the intro sequence to the back stage is a bit too long, but it explain about the break, however no one listen.

Break and Interview video

During breaking, FOH was playing varies video filmed by URY. They borrow Kenobi during 60SM to film interview with candidates. The reason being last year there seems complain about the break is useless. However the feedback seems not very positive in general. Part of the reason is the quality and the volume of the video, people who want to listen found it too quiet and inaudible quality wise, where people who don't care don't want to hear them at all. The Break also felt longer with those video cause the cadidate is generally boring people that people don't really care, however the comment on social media show a decent popularity of it, especially Tom's and Tamaki's.

It also confuse the audience that should they stay and watch or free to go to bar to get drink or chat to friend. It's not helping when YUSU cause the whole show had to break without announcement due to problems. URY in general agree that for the effort that they put into do it (2 days, but mostly sitting in your-space talking and planning the show so I bet to differ) it doesn't worth the time. Also there is no value in those content (interviewing candidate) on the night and after the night even though it's good content.

In practical, we will need to let the audience know why a break is needed. Although there is a backstage walk at the beginning, it might be useful to show YSTV/backstage camera stream on screen mute to let people know what going on. There is also concern for the PTO break where only FTO video is filmed, it's important that if there is any video is play it need to be relevant to the next section. Also there is a suggestion to ignore complain as people always complain as they they know what they want

From YSTV point of view, those video is not on bar of our normal production quality, especially audio quality (URY audio quality FTW). However YSTV will ultimately get the blame for them due to the nature of the medium.