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.

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

• 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.

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!

• Three Peaks Challenge

Helen Hobin and others, can you please write up your experiences with the Three Peaks Challenge???Unverified or incomplete information

• Bear Banter

• Band

Producers' Notes

The Good

All the guests showed up on time, including to the earlier rehearsal.

The Bad

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

We were up till the wee hours of the morning the night before editing the last VTs.

The script wasn't in the hands of the presenters until the day of, and then they were too busy editing to read it.

The autocue froze a few times, the presenters had never used autocue before and the autocue moved too fast at first, as there was no way for the autocue op to see what portion of the text was visible on the screen in the studio. This issue was fixed by marking the visible portion on the computer screen in the control room with masking tape.

We did not request graphics until the day of the show, and then a few people had to scramble to get them made.

Some of the VTs didn't play at first.

And the Ugly

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

Fundraising

There were two pieces 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.

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/), modeled 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