VT Shoots

 VT Shoots  

 

As a producer for this project with a number of other responsibilities to handle my role in the VT shoots was minimal. When developing the pitch, we planned some VT’s which helped outline the show, these also allowed us to gain commissioning from the panel. As a producer, I worked alongside the VT team to develop these ideas further and workshop any new ideas. There is a dedicated VT production manager who became our main point of contact regarding the team’s development, this also helped me to take a step back from this department while focusing on others.  

 

There were many meetings I held with the VT team, over a number of weeks, to workshop the original ideas and any new ideas which had been developed, this included any ideas they had generated for the commercial breaks. They found several items which they had ideas for, and we discussed which ones would work best for the show. We also discussed the locations which could be used for the Voxpops, including Rochester, Maidstone, Canterbury, and Ashford as well as the practicality of these locations and the type of people they would encounter. It was also important we defined the questions for the Voxpops in these meetings, so they were clear on what vibe we were going for. We also defined the parameters of the fashion challenge and what elements we could add to make this more challenging for the presenters. Once we defined these, we began discussing locations, we decided to use Maidstone town centre as there are a number of charity shops in close proximity which would make the filming day easier. As I am also a location scouter for the VT team, I worked with the VT production manager on location recces to scout and contact shops who would be happy with us filming there. This is also where the researchers were asked to find various trousers which the presenters would need to style, after this was complete myself and my fellow producer picked the trousers, we thought would work best for the show. We also discussed the filming style of all of these short VTs, particularly the fashion challenge as it will appear slightly handheld, but we want to avoid it feeling too much like a YouTube video. After this was discussed the VT team did some test shoots and we looked at the footage to say whether we liked the style used or not.  

 

Once we had all of these meetings in the pre-production stage, we held regular catch-up meetings with the production manager to keep up to date with the progress of the VT’s. These included helping guide them through any issues which arose as the production phase progressed. For example, they were having trouble getting people to engage and agree to film vox pops so we decided how to use the same locations at different times of the day to increase engagement from the general public.