Roses 2019

Roses 2019 Crew (without VT team)

Roses 2019 was hosted in York, and YSTV's coverage was for the first time organised by a 'Project Group', led by Edwin Barnes. Planning began in January 2019, with scheduling and larger technical planning being the first focuses.

Project Group

The YSTV Roses 2019 Project Group consisted of the following:

Management

Roses Lead: Edwin Barnes
Deputy Roses Lead: Stephanie Shires
Training and Development Lead: Olivia Gibbs
Merch and Promo Lead: Chun-Jou Yu

Technical

Technical Lead: Tom Lee
Infrastructure Lead: Matthew Stratford
O.B. Lead: Adam Birtles
Deputy O.B. Lead: James Bithell
Head of Visuals: Andrew Waddle

Content

Content Lead: Thomas Schubert
Head of VTs: Erhard Zurawka
VT Assistant: Klara Simonova, Prakriti Jha
Head of Presenting: Jacob Boyle
Deputy Head of Presenting: Tom McGonagle
Studio Lead: Zoe Dickinson
Deputy Studio Lead: Caroline Preynat-Viero
Head of Commentating: Piotrek Przyborowski

Operations

Operations Lead: Cal Cooke
Personell Lead: Charlotte Rogers
Deputy Operations Lead: Joseph Wharfe

Preperations

Preparations for Roses 2019 included moving all of YSTV's editing PCs into the studio space in order to free up the whole of the control room for a TX Centre. Setup for this happened over the week leading in to Roses. Other preperations further ahead of time included site visits, various purchases (including a lot of cabling and tape), and a visit to LA1:TV.

To train YSTV members in how to pre-produce and operate a live sport stream, Edwin Barnes revived the YSTV Sport label and pushed for it being a major project throughout the year leading up to Roses. This did not just allow new members to gain more experience with equipment and what to look out for, but also enabled the tech team to try out all venues before the Roses weekend.

Roses Weekend

YSTV interviewing Mark Addy

Despite regular technical problems (namely the stream not going online), the entire weekend went fairly smooth. Having learned from the previous year, the team reduced the number of simultaneous livestreams in order to focus more on the quality of the individual streams. This included organising several studio segments and commentators for every sport.

The most ambitious livestream of the weekend was the Opening Ceremony, produced and directed by Edwin Barnes while Zoe Dickinson was in charge of the studio show. Featuring the Womens Netball match, YSTV's set-up included two wireless cameras, the jib and live highlights. The stream was executed perfectly, which the team celebrated at the Roses Festival later that night.

Besides the regular livestreams, the Roses team also produced a wide array of VTs and social media content. These ranged from interviews, over full recaps of matches that were not broadcast live or event coverage videos. The highlight of the weekend, however, was Charlotte Rogers interviewing Mark Addy (Robert Baratheon).

The weekend concluded with York bringing home an overall victory, with the closing ceremony being the Men's Rugby Match on 22 Acres. In order to broadcast this, YSTV brought their OB van and a complex outdoor set-up.

Promotion

Roses 2019 saw Edwin Barnes fulfil a long-held wish to make a parody video of the Mitchell & Webb Look Football Sketch, promoting YSTV's Roses Coverage. This trailer was produced in colloration with ComedySoc, starred former Chair George Blackman, and was released on social media to critical acclaim. The main upshot of the trailer was a running joke around YSTV, firstly to shout 'Watch the Roses' at random times (particularly during NaSTA 2019), and secondly to say 'All the ___, All the time' in relation to almost anything. At the time of writing, this joke is yet to grow old.

Other promotion included posters (simply designed and reading 'All the Roses, all the time) and social media takeovers, based around a 'YSTV Roses' brand designed by Edwin Barnes that drew heavily from his previous 'YSTV Sport' branding work. A planned website takeover like that done for YUSU Elections 2019 never materialised.