Roses 2015

Roses 2015
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Genre:	Sport/Event coverage
Broadcast:	24-26th April 2015
Producer(s):	Kenric Yuen Sarah Mesterton-Gibbons

Roses 2015 was held in York and produced by Kenric Yuen and Sarah Mesterton-Gibbons. This year YUSU expanded the scale of Roses to turn it into a campus-wide event and put up quite a lot of promotional material well before the weekend. Most of the budget and planning seemed to be focused on the opening ceremony boxing night, which was very successful.

YSTV collaborated with LA1:TV on coverage of Roses - Chris Osborn and Jessica Beard were the technical and production contacts respectively. LA1 rented a truck to bring two O.B. kits, along with many cameras and other pieces of equipment. However, one of the O.B. kits, and most of the extra kit (such as a steadycam) ended up not being used at all.

Room Booking and Show Planning

Last-minute editing fun!

Sport Fixtures

Forward scouting was done to secure the storage room next to Main Hall, which Kenobi was moved into on Thursday evening, and stayed there for the whole weekend. The sport village agreed to let us use part of the audience area in the Heslington East swimming pool, and allowed us to start setting up early on Saturday morning when the pool events began to happen. We also visited RKC with Chris ahead of time to sort out entrance/setting during darts coverage. There was also a final location scouting with LA1 on the Thursday before Roses weekend.

In regards to 22 Acres, YUSU was only able to pin down where the fixtures were going to be the Thursday the week before, when they agreed to provide power lines and network for the events that we were going to cover, and ended up failing to do so (however, LA1 brought enough cable to run it). It had also not been decided where the closing ceremony would be (22 acres or RKC), and we could only pin YUSU down on an answer on the morning of the ceremony.

Room Booking

Room booking was made a term before, with G/045a booked for editing and G/020 for tech support, servers and equipment from the studio. Unfortunately, the booking only started at 16:00 on Friday, which wasn't much use for the shows on Friday. YUSU instead lent us G/045b, where we moved our servers for only a little while, before deciding URY stores could provide a better home. After moving the servers out, it became the edit room and studio storage instead. G/020 stayed true to the plan and become a master control room, where Robert Walker, Tom Cheyney, and Lloyd Wallis spent most of the weekend providing technical support to all the shows and fixing the stream/player.

Crew Problems

In the planning there were up to three O.B. units and a studio show operating each day. In practice, due to lack of crew and no planning about how to actually set it up, we only had two O.B. units and the studio shows each day. All the studio shows were produced by YSTV, except for the evening shows which were produced by LA1. Crew planning was a huge problem due to the YSTV sign-up system and LA1 having insufficient people. One of the reasons why LA1 cancelled so many of their shows and we had to cancel/change our VTs was due to lack of crew. In the future, we should confirm the time of everyone and slot them into crew positions each day, maybe using a giant whiteboard system as is used at Woodstock.

Show Schedule

YSTV and LA1:TV crew photo

Friday:

• Studio Show 13:00-14:00
• O.B.1: Opening Ceremony - Central Hall 18:00-21:00 (set up from morning)
• O.B.2: American Football Open - 22 acres 11:30-17:00 (changed to Rugby 7 12:30-14:00, then cancelled)
• Kenobe: Sitting Volleyball - Main Hall
• VT: Fencing, Karete (missed due to early finish)

Saturday:

• Studio show: 10:30 - 11:00, 14:30 - 15:00 (delayed and recorded instead as we "crashed the network of the building")
• O.B.1: Football Men 1st - 22 acres 10:00 - 13:30 (cancelled, became VT) Darts men and women 16:00 - 22:30 (delayed to 20:00 *in the middle of the darts event)
• O.B.2: Swimming pool for Swimming, Octopush and water-polo all afternoon (cancelled, VT instead)
• Kenobi: Badminton mix, Volleyball women and men, Trampolining mixed 9:00 - 20:00
• VT: Mountain Biking, Ballroom dancing (covered by LA1), Dance, Kendo (cancelled) Rowing, Pole exercises, Hockey (cancelled)

Sunday:

• Studio show: 9:30 - 10:00, 14:30 - 15:00
• O.B.1: Rugby Men 1st - 22 acres 15:30 - 17:30
• O.B.2: Tennis 9:30 - 15:30 (cancelled), Closing ceremony (moved to O.B.1)
• Kenobi: Badminton - Main Hall 9:00-17:00
• VT: Table tennis, Archery, Cricket (unplanned) Cheerleading (unplanned)

Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony was one of the most well-planned events during Roses 2015 - It was a boxing match in Central Hall followed by a discussion between Greg Dyke and Roy Hodgson about football and other things, and ended with a firework display in the middle of campus. YUSU also set up a stage in Vanbrugh Paradise with a screen to show the boxing match live.

Presenters

Our coverage had five presenters: two at the back of Central Hall (block 6) as main presenters, two presenters (Jess Courtney and Grace Winpenny) on the floor of Central Hall for Twitter and interviews, and a single presenter in Vanbrugh paradise to link the indoor coverage to the outdoor fireworks display at the end of the evening. During the boxing match, Joe Butterfield was the onstage host (arranged by YUSU) and commentary during the matches was provided by URY, who resided in the gallery above us.

Cameras and Vision Mixing

In terms of vision mixing, LA1 brought their ATEM 2ME, which was able to mix two separate outputs. One of the outputs was for our live steam and the other one to the screen inside Central Hall and the stage on Vanbrugh Paradise. In additional to 5Unverified or incomplete information a fixed camera, we also made use of 3Unverified or incomplete information a remote unit including Bolt from LA1 and YSTV wireless kit. They mostly served as cameras for the ringside presenters, closeup cameras during the boxing match, and the Vanbrugh Paradise camera after the action moved out of Central Hall. There was also a single camera that made use of IT services' fibers across the lake to film the fireworks, however the fiber was limited in where it came out, and we had to use a specialized fiber converter that LA1 haveUnverified or incomplete information.

Other Tech

We were also provided with a spotlight to track the boxers as they walked out of the dressing rooms to the stage during the ceremony, and provided VT playback with the screen mix for the opening video. YSTV's coverage was sent to the big screens on either side of the stage during the actual event, as well as to the outdoor screen on Vanbrugh Paradise. AV provided wireless mics and helped set them up along with the com system provided by LA1. AV had staff during the event for gallery access for URY as well as tech support.

Paper Plates Awards

The Paper Plates awards, from the back of LA1's rented van.

To honour some of the events that happened during Roses 2015, a series of Paper Plate awards were put together by Robert Walker, Lloyd Wallis, Tom Cheyney, and Helen Hobin.

For the full list, see Paper Plates award.

Producers' Notes

Group hug!

The weekend went really well!!! We generated lots of lovely content including five half-hour daytime studio shows, three two-hour evening shows (OBs), lots of VoD content, and two sports coverage OBs each morning/afternoon.

Things That Went Well

• Studio Shows:

The guests all showed up on time, scripts were ready on time, and VTs were ready on time (most of the time). As usual, everyone worked really hard and chipped in to get everything done on time!

• OBs:

We had some newer YSTV members that we put in charge of the OB unit in Main Hall, and they did really well! Set up and break down was quick and relatively easy.

Things That We Could Do Better Next Time (Notes for Future Producers)

• A suggestion for all future big productions: Put up a big white board in the studio and list the crew call on it for each day, and tell people that they have to check it at the end of the day for the next day. Maybe do crew call the week before, and get people to commit ahead of time?
• Don’t plan to cover content that we don’t have the crew for. In other words, don’t be overly ambitious.
• Communicate with LA1:TV regarding how each TV station works, maybe have a meeting in person in the future.
• Make sure that people eat/sleep enough/at decent times…
• Create a central contact spreadsheet with everyone’s names and phone numbers on (for LA1:TV and YSTV).