The Cordless Show

The Cordless show jan 25^th

On Monday the 25^th of January I was back in Lee south London with New Treatment filming the next few episodes of the Cordless show. I did a couple of days work on the Cordless show in December which you can read about in my previous blog.

Before I had even got on set I had a feeling that filming the cordless show was going to be different this time. The call sheet looked comparatively bare with only six bands instead of Decembers 12 and there was only three interviews instead of with every band. Happy days I thought!

When I did arrive on set I noticed that they had abandoned one of the sets and there was half as many people on set! I went and found Stefan and Tim the director and DOP and asked what needed to be done and set to it.

They had also scrapped the three camera set up which I was very pleased about as the steadi cam and the crane were getting in the way of the camera on the tripod and every camera seemed to be battling for the same shots. This time they had a very clear view of what shots were to be attained for each performance, getting a wide, close ups, cut away’s and a couple of steadi cam shots. The new year had brought a new working attitude to New Treatment. With there now being only one set the lighting changes from artist to artist were minimal which helped cut down set up times.

I was very impressed with the way things were running we had a couple of unexpected hiccups, for example the first band were very late so the first act we shot was the second band coming in for there normal slot which was a little disheartening to have lost so much time first thing in the morning. We also had another set designer and Director VS DOP props battle regarding the positioning of some coloured light bulbs, which brought back memories of a similar battle on the previous shoot regarding some coloured plastic tubes! But with the new organised shooting schedule we managed to get the time back and wrap on time!

Here is the link for the Cordless show again for those who have seen it, and if you haven’t please do have a look. http://www.cordless-show.com/shows.asp

Thank you to all who read this, until next time.

Scott Sullivan

The Cordless Show

On the 11th and 12th of December I went down to London to take part in the filming of a few episodes of the Cordless Show. For those of you who don't know, The Cordless Show is an internet music show for unsigned artists.

On arrival I didn't really know what to expect, having not seen the Cordless show myself at that point. However what I saw when I walked in, took me completely by surprise! There were two wonderful sets, a jib crane, steady cam the whole shabang!

Once I'd got over the shock of the incredible equipment on hand I got chatting to the Director about what had to be done today. When he told me we had eight bands to film in twelve hours I was a little taken aback! A little too much shock for before 9am I think! But in the knowledge that was what had to be achieved, I got cracking. I was camera assisting and helping out with the lighting on this particular production and with three camera's and two sets with only enough lights for one this was no small feat, but because the camera's were HD there was only a small amount of work to be done there. The hardest thing to get done was to set the lights up so that they weren't in the way of the crane or in shot from the other two cameras. After a certain amount of fiddling all was done and I was very excited to get started.

The first band came on, a boy band under the name of FDM (formerly Fun Da' Mental!) and the show got started, everything looked great the set was brilliant and looking at the monitors from three cameras I could see that we were getting some great footage. Once the performance was over we had to move some of the equipment out and set up for the band interview. And so the day went on in this fashion, band performance, band interview changing between the two sets as we went along. I don't want to reveal too much more about the day as the other programmes have not been aired yet, so I'll leave those treats for you to discover your self. But at the end of the first day I was completely knackerd but had a good productive day and was ready for the next days shoot.

The 12th of December with the same production company was to be a day of Viral adverts for the bands and sponsors of The Cordless Show. Again on arrival I asked the Director what the plan was for the day and he said to me very casually, "Oh it's only 9 virals to shoot today!" By now I was kind of used to these mammoth tasks and on the success of the previous day thought it was entirely possible, so set about getting everything ready. All the viral's were to be shot on the RED camera which I was excited about as I have not had a great deal of experience assisting with the RED and was keen to learn, but it did mean it took me a little longer to set up, not having too much previous experience with it.

The idea’s for the virals were all fairly straight forward on paper, (as these things always are!) but were slightly more difficult to put into practice and took a bit time to work out the kinks. We also had some of the artists who had agreed to feature in the adverts cancel at the last minute, which was rather unfortunate. But despite these set backs we managed to complete all the adverts possible with the artists we had available and to a very high standard. I am very much looking forward to seeing them once they are online.

To watch the cordless show online please follow this link;

http://www.cordless-show.com/shows.asp