No Good Deed (Video)

The live cablecast of my one act teleplay “No Good Deed” aired last Saturday March 9, and what an experience! Two members of my skeleton crew, and in a skeleton crew everyone is needed, had to drop out because of medical issues which left us shorthanded. Fortunately the crew we had were up to the challenge, and challenging it was. The original plan was to use shotgun microphones set on the studio floor pointed up at the actors, but the shotgun mics were locked up in storage and we had no access to them (one of the sidelined crew members had access, hence the setback).

Fortunately there were hanging choir microphones up in the light grid, but then came the roadblock of untangling them from the grid and lowering them down. We very carefully had to navigate the staircase ladder so as to avoid the hanging lights in the grid to get to the mics, and then Linda the technical director went up the staircase to lower the choir mics but they were wrapped up in such a way that it took some time for her to figure out how to lower them down. Simultaneously Tom the audio person was at the other end of the mic wire on another ladder trying to reach the plug and connect the XLR cable which goes to the multicore stage box (apologies for the technical mumbojumbo). Once that was accomplished it was on to the next task, uploading the opening music.

If I had a file of the music I was going to use for the opening, Cayman by Jeff Lawrence, then everything would have been easier, but easy wasn’t in the cards for this venture. Tom sprang into action; he opened the file on his laptop, connected it to the soundboard, but had no luck getting the music to play through the audio system. I could only watch helplessly as Tom struggled to figure out how to transfer the music while the clock ticked closed to the 7:30PM air time. We were hoping for at least one run through with the cameras to figure out the shots but that hope vanished once the time reached 7:15.

At about 7:23PM Tom finally got the music to play through the sound board. With no time for a run through with the cameras all we could do was practice the opening. The opening consisted of a black screen with music then an announcer announcing the program followed by on screen texts of the title and the name of the episode, then the camera fading in on the actors. We practiced a number of times with me doing the announcing (another job that was originally going to be done by one of the out crew members) and before we knew it the time was 7:29.

7:30PM PST; I’m standing at the mic in the studio next to the control room window, actors are in place, the music begins, five seconds later Ron the C.G. (character generator, tech who types in the on screen text) gives me the signal, I say, “Live from Community Television of Santa Cruz, it’s Studio One!” into the mic, put mic back in its stand, quietly open door to control room, and sit next to Linda to give her the directions.

The way a live broadcast works is I sit next to the technical director and listen to the audio as I read off each camera direction to the TD which he or she will enter into the Tri-Caster, the control panel. I did write camera directions onto the right side of the script as I normally do, but since we didn’t have a chance to rehearse with the cameras to make sure all the shots were lined up with the blocking (actor’s physical movement) we were basically flying blind. Camera switches were missed, actors walked out of camera view, and the framing was often mismatched with the composition, but somehow we made it across the tightrope without falling. And because the running time of the teleplay was just over 20 minutes I went out and talked to the cast after the play’s end and talked to the cast to fill up the half hour time slot.

Big thanks to the actors Lindsay, Ian, and Jackson who excellently brought the characters to life and found new aspects for them, and an equally big thanks to the crew who rose to the occasion despite setbacks and got the show up and running!

So here it is, enjoy!

https://youtu.be/kIHBnpWLVu8?si=cqJGByoNo4rUMg_2

©2024 Robert Kirkendall