Navigating Live Broadcast Challenges: Lessons from a Dress Rehearsal (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: One of the things that you could say went wrong is that when we were doing our dress rehearsal, we are timing everything because we have only been given a certain amount of time for the show to be broadcast. So there we are and Anele's ready, done her link, Luisa's standing by to sing, and the ladies are not ready, the top 10, because there are some things you only figure out on the day. And we realized that the setup at the back and how the ladies were getting put into their evening gowns was not enough time. And you might be thinking, didn't you plan this? Oh no, we planned it. We already knew at that moment how much time is between this point and this point, but there's some things that you will only see and experience on the day. I think we ran 10 minutes late of waiting and we realized we have a massive problem that we have 10 minutes potential gap of the ladies not being ready in time for the evening wear and that has a massive ripple effect on the broadcast. So what did it mean? Number one, we need to say what are we doing as a backup if the ladies are not ready or there's a wardrobe malfunction at the back because we want the process to be fair. we're not going to start without all 10 being ready and we had to discuss what is our backup plan. At that point we were able to bring in Moshe to also be in the venue for banter and we also started preparing some questions for Anele to give to our judges just in conversation to buy time because it's a live broadcast and the show must go on. And what it also meant is we had to completely rework how the ladies were getting dressed. There had to be hands on deck, it had to be so quick and we had to rehearse that outfit change and we did eventually get it right. So much as I say some things went very wrong, it is good for them to go wrong so that you can prepare for a better show because there are some backup plans you just do not think of until something goes wrong. So thank goodness it didn't go wrong when it went wrong. So AutoCue, what it is, is it is basically the script that moves up so that you can read it. Many people use AutoCue, I'm sure even our president uses it when he reads speeches so that a person is not standing with cue cards or a script in front of them. So all it is is a screen in front of the presenter that will be next to some of the cameras and to you at home they're looking straight into camera but it's rigged right on top of the lens so that the presenter can read the lines. Sometimes if you look at conference events if you see a speaker speaking with a piece of glass it's just a very slick piece of glass the screen is on the floor like not on the floor but just beneath them And this class is reflecting exactly what the speaker needs to be reading. So that's what AutoCue is. It's a whole thing. We have professional operators that scroll and, you know, the size of the font needs to be correct for the presenter with where they're standing. You have to scroll at a time that they are reading and speaking and presenting naturally. One of the other things that went wrong in our day before rehearsal prep is that when I stood on the stage prior to Anneli getting there I realized that the screens are a little bit small for the autocue so we made the call we're going with bigger screens. What we didn't anticipate is that there is a media pit that's a little bit high at the back so obviously they can get great photographs of the show and those people pretty much started standing in front of the autocue screen and that became a massive issue on the show day and these are things that you don't necessarily anticipate. We had to send security to keep that space clear so Anela could read all of her lines but these are some of the things that happen in production is you're like let's fix this by making the screen bigger and then the ripple effect is oh you made the screen bigger now you're in the way of the media pit. You can't move the media pit now. Why? Because there is a safety officer that needs to come and sign off that the space is safe. You can't just move those things. Now suddenly you're like, right, we have to do this show without having media stand in the middle of the screen. And that's the best place for them to take pictures. But what will it help with Anneli Conrad Hill-Lyons.