Day 5 - Workplacement 30/9/11



Time Started - 9:30

Time Finish - 5:30
Total Hours - 8

Self Assessment Report -
Uniform: 4
Punctuality: 5
Initiative: 4
Cooperation: 5
Work Standard: 4
Development of Skills: 5

Today was my last day of workplacement at tcn 9. Today I was back in studio 3 for the filming of the 11am news, the 4.30pm news, various iphone updates, voice overs, live news breaks and qantas updates for the morning, afternoon and evening.  Unlike other places in the building there is always soemthing happening in studio 3 which is described by many workers as "The Sausage Factory". Also today I had to organise my gifts and thank you cards for people. My gifts were just some small boxes of chocolates and my cards were just thank you messages full of appreciation. Later on in the day Marco showed me where most of the workers pidgen holes were, so that's how I dropped off my cards and gifts.

When I arrived at the studio I was once again greated by Graeme who was setting up for the 11am news.
Today I really wanted to learn more about audio so I sat with the audio technician, Jimmy in the audio booth. Jimmy showed me everything there possibly was in the audio booth and in the studio. In the studio Jimmy showed me the 3 patch bays for the weather, sport and guest/host microphones. These patch bays are connected back to the mixing desk and assigned to faders. The most important patch bay is the guset/host patch bay which directly connects the microphones using the XLR connection that Jason showed me on Monday.

The next thing Jimmy showed me was the speakers that were installed in the audio booth. There were two different types of speakers one being Rogers speakers that Jimmy describes as having the best quality becaause of how old they were. The second speakers were Tannoy speakers.


Tannoy Speakers



Rogers Speakers

A compressor similar to the one
in the studio

The next thing Jimmy showed me was the audio compressor used to literally squash the sound wave when the frequency of the sound is too intense. Jimmy said this comes in handy when the faders get turned up past 10 on the mixing desk.  

The Digicart 2



The Instant Replay 2



The next things Jimmy showed me were the special effects players used to play music and sound effects during live broadcasts. The players were connected to a few faders on the mixing desk used to play the most important sound effects such as the closing song and the sting. Other less important sound effects such as the sound of horse's galloping or people laughing need to be played directly from the sound effect players. The two sound effect players are a DigiCart 2 and an Instant Replay 2.  

After this Jimmy showed me the standby mixing desk used in case the main desk went down due to technical malfunction. The standby desk is kept in a floor rack above the patch bay which is used as well as the standby desk. The standby desk specifically is a Yamaha DM1000. The desk is digital and features a screen that moniters the sound wave produced in the broadcast. The standby mixer is also complete with EQ tweakers.

The mixing Desk

Once Jimmy explained all the smaller parts of the audio booth he showed me how the main mixing desk worked. The audio desk is a Calrec mixer desk which is analog. On the desk there are around 26 different faders for guest, weather, sport and host microphones along with a standby fader for each. There are also faders to control the volume of networks 1-4, assets 1-4, harisses a, b, c and d, EVS 1 and 2, Viz 3, RTD, instant and digi. There are also faders for phoners 1 and 2 which is for audio that is coming in live from phone. The phoner calls are controlled through hybrid's 1 and 2. Some other features of the mxing desk include knobs that change the EQ on each fader. For each fader there are also options to change the foldback, pre fader and mix minus settings. Another important setting is how the sound is played through speakers mainly either stereo (distribution of sound through each speaker) and mono (distribution of sound through both speakers together).

Like on Monday and Thursday I saw the 4.30 news filmed from the control room. Unlike those other times I knew a lot more about what to do in audio. Overall my day was very enjoyable and the people I meet really went out of their way to make my work experience very enjoyable. Below is my employee assesment report completed by Marco.