Multi-cam Memoirs

Multi-cam memoirs.

My first experience with the multi-cam project started last year when i was a contestant on a lot of the second years shows, I then went on to host a show. I had a lot of fun doing this and it got me excited for the next year when a group and I would be creating our own shows.

When it was time to pick groups i was straight in there to pluck my friends out from the crowd to create my own college themed “Avengers”. I was certain we were going to excel in this. With the driving creativity of the combined minds of Tim and myself mixed with the working force of Andrew and Kyle peppered with the good looks of Claudia and Georgie, I thought we’d be unstoppable.

The first idea we agreed upon was a chat show about 'Paranormal activity', we called it 'Paranormal Investigators'. Now at first Tim and I were against the idea and proposed a 'comedy' show primarily based on 'The Ricky Gervais show' where each episode Tim and I would interview some one we thought was a little odd and try and get a few laughs.  I say 'comedy' loosely, as it was only Tim and myself who thought it was funny. So we worked on this 'comedy' for a while, while the rest of the group suffered silently, two weeks before the show was meant to be filmed, we scrapped the idea and went back to the paranormal one.

'Paranormal Investigators' was a chat show with two guests and a VT. The VT was our group going out to a local haunted spot and doing some filming at night, hoping to run into a ghoul or at least Mr. Jenkins the janitor dressed as the swamp thing. Unfortunately we're not Mystery inc. so we didn't run into any denizens of the night. We staged a couple jumps to make it more interesting to watch, for example there's a bit in the VT where Tim's leaning against a fence talking and someone slams their hand against it to make him jump, but we weren't trying to make people think Zuul was chasing us, we made it obvious it was for a laugh and to make the video less boring. The first guest we had on the show was a psychic woman who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead, do palm readings and exorcisms. She was very interesting and had some good stories. We planned to have some sort of scientist as the second guest to create a debate on the show but as we left everything last minuet we didn't have a scientist, we had a boy. The boys name was Matt and he was a camera guy for our VT, he did a good job but he's no Noam Chomsky. Perhaps this will be a lesson to us for our next show.

For this show we decided that the loud and cocky guy should be the floor manager, as that's the job who talks to the audience, guests and keeps the floor in check. That guy happens to be me. "I got this in the bag" I thought, as I lay back sipping on a cocktail of arrogance and certainty. Claudia, bless her, was put as the director, and part of what entails with that job is to make sure everyone is on track, now I'm quite a handful at times so i fully appreciate why everyone became quickly aggravated with me, but she kept her cool, and kicking and screaming, she pulled the group through on the day of the shoot. I don't think i did a terrible job at floor managing, but i know i didn't do a great job either, I wasn't as attentive to the guests as i should have been and i wasn't as fun as i planned to be, when the time came to talk about health and safety with the audience, looking back it must have seemed like i couldn't wait to get out of there, not the case, i think i was just nervous. Perhaps next show i'll do a different job.

The next show was in about 5 weeks and like a group of professional matadors we were going to tackle the show by the horns and pull it down to submission. We wanted to push the boundaries on the conventions of a college show, every year some one does a show on ghosts, a film quiz, something about fear and frankly that's boring, people don't want recycled ideas (Hollywood take note) people want something fresh, so we decided to do the first improv show in fareham college media department history. OK so an improv show isn't original, but if you put it against everything else that's been done at college, it's the 'Citizen Kane' of multi-cam. Or so we thought.

The basic idea of the show was to have 3 improv artists and 4 different sets in the studio, each set would be a scenario that the artist would have no idea about, we would dress them up and throw them into a set each filled with slightly scripted actors who would guide the scene in a certain dirrection, for example the first scene was a doctors surgeory, the artist was dressed as a doctor trying to explain to two actors that their mother is fine, until half way through when another actor rushes in as a surgeon begging for help from the doctor panicking the other two actors. After each improv artist had a scenario, the fourth set would host a scenario for all of them to be together, giving the artists room for anarchy and competition. It would have been brilliant if it turned out how I imagined it.

We had so many meetings to discuss who was doing what and when, we kept changing roles, and nothing got done. I didn't help by messing about for ages and doing little to no work, but we were so sure of ourselves, by this point i was handing out more of the cocktail I had in the first show, we were off our tits with certainty. I got given the task of finding all the actors, shouldn't be difficult considering i did acting for two years and im part of a theatre. It turns out it was harder than I expected, people were either busy or just didn't answer their phone, seems like im being ignored. Finally some one answers and accepts, then another, now theres one more I would love to have as an improv guy, I need to get in contact with Dan Scott. So I call him, no answer, I leave a message on his facebook wall, no answer, so I assume he's not interested. A week before the show he's in the studio with another group, that cheeky S.O.B. So I go in there ask him and he says "Of coarse", well that turned out better than expected. We now have three improv guys, but before we claimed Dan I had an idea for how to make the set look fabulous. Theres a man I know who builds and paints sets for a living, I asked him to come in and paint the set, he seemed really up for it at first, then for what ever reasons he didn't answer his phone and we had to paint it ourselves. For our set I decided I would regain some masculinity by building a fire place. It turned out disastrously as I have the carpentry skills of a blind quadriplegic. The next day I made some adjustments to my creation and made it camera worthy, I also made a little fire out of tissue paper. Shortly after my masterpiece was finished I was in the company of two out of the three improv guys, wait, lets go back a couple days.

It's Sunday, we have a planned rehearsal with the improvs for Monday at 1300 hours, I contact the two we have planned Sam and Ben, Ben has a job interview and Sam has work, "that’s fine" I shrug it off "We'll do one Tuesday instead" they agree to this. I get a text Monday afternoon from Sam saying that he's got work all week and won't be able to make it, now that’s annoying but recoverable, we'll just find someone else. So that day we contact a couple of the first years, one of which seems very confident and keen, Matt. Not to mention out sound guy, Kyle hasn’t been in to college all week. So back to the present.

I’m in the company of Ben and Matt, an hour and a half before the show, sat in the corridor rewriting the script so out presenter, Neil, knows what to say and where to go. Andrew comes up to me and says "we've lost Dan, he's ill and can't make it in". What the balls are we meant to do now? Neil offers to fill the part and Steve jumps in to host, so now I’m RE-rewriting a script for a show that’s in an hour with three guests that don't really know what’s going on. If our group was ‘The Avengers’ Kyle would be Agent Coleson, a returning character who doesn’t really make a difference but everyone likes, and buggers off before the big fight scene. My motto seemed to be “everything’s going to be fine” that week, and by some luck and hard work with the rest of the group, it was. Everyone pulled together and Steve and Neil were a huge help for jumping in last minute. The show would have failed if it weren’t for them.

So all I can say now is that it was fun, most of it, I grew to hate it during the middle and really wanted to just give up, but we pulled it off and I’ve gained a lot of respect for the people in my group who I have the good pleasure of calling them ‘my friends’.