The first ‘Recorded as Live” TV programmes I have decided to analyse is the popular TV Quiz show ‘Quite Interesting’ or QI as it is more commonly known as. QI is an topical show, which is presented in a comical fashion, yet still in an intelligent way. A varied range of intellectual ability is represented in the show, with the shows host Stephen Fry being at the top of the scale, Fry is generally accompanied by different celebrities each week, with the only consistent celebrity contestant being Alan Davies, of Jonathan Creek fame, between them all they make the show a more than ‘Quite Interesting’ show as the title suggests.
The layout to the studio seems fairly simple, with an probable audience of around 150-200 capacity. The desk the pane sit at is in the shape of the letter Q, representing the name of the quiz show, and a buzzer is also assigned to each individual guest, which often include a different amusing noise when pressed, for example, in the Halloween episode, “Gothic” , each buzzer included a ‘scary’ sound effect, though it should be noted for Alan Davies buzzer noise, it was “Arsenal - Nil, Norwich City - 2” and also the buzzer for Jimmy Carr, a guest on this particular show, featured a voice saying “Here’s Jimmy”, these both added some humour to the show and in a sense got the episode started. Behind the two contestants on either side of the host there was also a background which on occasion shoed pictures associated with the questions being asked at the time. The general layout of the set was the same as usual, and was probably non-permanent also, in this one particular Halloween episode, the set was kept the same though gothic props were used and included two comical gargoyles, one of which was picking it’s nose, these were placed to each side of the host which in turn drew attention to them. In addition the props, dark lighting was also used and to begin with were accompanied by night time pictures of trees behind the contestants to create an atmosphere of gothic hues. Any lighting would used would be hooked up to a lighting rig, which was probably quite big but not very complex, as anything you can keep simple in TV Productions, you do.
The layout to the studio seems fairly simple, with an probable audience of around 150-200 capacity. The desk the pane sit at is in the shape of the letter Q, representing the name of the quiz show, and a buzzer is also assigned to each individual guest, which often include a different amusing noise when pressed, for example, in the Halloween episode, “Gothic” , each buzzer included a ‘scary’ sound effect, though it should be noted for Alan Davies buzzer noise, it was “Arsenal - Nil, Norwich City - 2” and also the buzzer for Jimmy Carr, a guest on this particular show, featured a voice saying “Here’s Jimmy”, these both added some humour to the show and in a sense got the episode started. Behind the two contestants on either side of the host there was also a background which on occasion shoed pictures associated with the questions being asked at the time. The general layout of the set was the same as usual, and was probably non-permanent also, in this one particular Halloween episode, the set was kept the same though gothic props were used and included two comical gargoyles, one of which was picking it’s nose, these were placed to each side of the host which in turn drew attention to them. In addition the props, dark lighting was also used and to begin with were accompanied by night time pictures of trees behind the contestants to create an atmosphere of gothic hues. Any lighting would used would be hooked up to a lighting rig, which was probably quite big but not very complex, as anything you can keep simple in TV Productions, you do.
In this style of television show, many cameras will be used thus giving availability for cameras to be able to get different types of shots, for example in the episode of QI that I watched, I estimate that they probably had around 4-6 cameras, most of which were movable, and perhaps one camera, the host camera, being the only one fixed in place. The type of shots seen in QI were two shots of the guests, medium close ups of the host and individual guests and a wide group shot of the host, and the two guests either side of him. All talent on set will have a microphone, and, as was the case on QI, these microphones will on most occasions be clip-on omni-directional microphones. The audience would also have a microphone hanging down from the ceiling, and this would be an directional microphone.
For any TV production, a crew is needed, all crews vary in how big they are as all productions are different, and less crew is needed for some and more is needed for others, for QI, I would approximate that the crew was quite large and included 30 or 40 plus people. Any crew member, and even the audience members need to be aware that there are many health and safety risks in a studio, such as electricity faults, lights not being rigged up properly etc, therefore must be as safe as possible when on set or in the audience.
The general format of QI is rigid, though it did involve some ad-lib (mostly any humour seen in the show seemed to be ad-lib rather than read from a script).
The audience for QI was likely to be young adults, and adults in general as stereotypically quiz shows of any type are appealing to that age, and especially considering many of them contain humour, this would definitely attract the younger adults to watch as they might be more interested in the humour side than the factual side of quiz shows.
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