roducing a television show can come easily to those with practice, which makes sense. Those people understand what certain elements to budget, modify, or strip away in order for the show to run successfully. As for me, this past year, I was given my first opportunity to be a sole producer on my very own live television broadcast, Smash for the Ages. The original desire for Smash for the Ages was to create a show in the style of a live, professional eSports tournament broadcast with skilled video game players playing the most recent game in the Super Smash Bros. franchise, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, in order to provide a new piece of sports entertainment that will appeal to those not affiliated with gaming and allow those who are gamers and eSports enthusiasts to be compelled in the stakes of the contestants and the competition.
As I began the pre-production for the show, it became clear that things would have to be scaled back significantly since my team and I were designated to an hour program. My initial decision to have the top 10 players within the Hofstra gaming club, Hofstra Esports, compete had to notably be lowered down to the top 8 players. This in turn had my team and I look back and reformat the tournament bracket for the show, so the overall structure would flow better with the shorten amount of time we were given. Developing this basis for the show, I concluded that I could pair the 8 players this way the competitive aspect can be heightened by the element of teamwork. This definitely pushed the direction of the show, but that doesn't mean I wasn't surprised along the way. Since I am a member of Hofstra Esports, my team and I held a qualifiers in conjunction with their typical club event and who ever entered and won top 8 would be eligible to compete in the show on April 29th. Even though, I had an idea of who would be the top players competing, I was surprised by the different people who won the qualifiers. At that moment, I knew these players to be truly skilled at the game and would demonstrate that skill to the audience through each team's strategic game plan and the trials they faced to have the chance to make it on that stage.
I'm a designer, producer and I am hands-on for every project I undertake.
– Dita Von Teese
The creative side of what I do is really something I think
people overlooked for a while.
COMPETITION IS THE BASIS OF HUMAN SPORT AND ESPORTS IS NO DIFFERENT.
As the sole producer and first time ever producing any kind of live broadcast, I needed the help from others who could stand by me and provide feedback through all of their ideas to improve the show. Within the undertaking of the senior course, a couple of remarkable people had agreed to take on these roles. These people included my two associate producers, Michael Bruzzone and Seann Morgan, as well as my production manager, Alex Poulos.
At the start of the pre-production process, we began developing the idea of the show and what we wanted the end goal to be. I delegated some of the responsibilities amongst Michael, Seann, and Alex. In order to have this blog post stay on course, I will only discuss the main tasks that every member was in charge of during the course of the production process. Michael's tasks were to construct and improve upon the overall budget in order to ensure our expenses were managed so our fianicial decisions stayed within our initial budget and we had everything purchased in time for the show. From time to time, Alex also helped improve the budget to secure we were on the right track. Seann was selected to write and develop the show's script since he was an excellent head writer for our parody of SNL, Thursday Night Live. I made sure to oversee this area specifically as I wanted it to be understood by the overall audience and be easily read by my talent. I also wanted Jon Cooper, our director, to have a script that would closely be accurate to the overall flow of the show for him to understand and mark up. Lastly, Alex was instructed first to prepare everything for package shoots, such as the camera, audio, and lighting equipment and work alongside Sean McNally, our graphics deisgner and on-stage host, to ensure that the graphics and overall tone of the show were flawless. He then would oversee the external drives and SD cards for all the footage to then be ingested into Avid NEXIS, and finally assist me to create the floor plan and the functionality of the talent being able to move around.
The communication within our team was impeccable. We regularly spoke in scheduled in-person meetings and through text message throughout the pre-production process. I was able to clearly explain what the show is, what it will be, and how we would get there, and from there, everyone within the group hoped on board and began providing their input on how we would reach our goals. In terms of preparation upon the actual production, I believe each and every one of us were determined to have a smooth, running show. However, we came across a means to revise our rundown for the show on the spot that it was such an unforeseen shift on our crew. Yet, with this sudden confusion, I took it upon myself to relay all this new information to every single of my crew from the control room. I had to make the tough decision to delay the show back a few extra minutes to ensure everyone was up to speed with all the new changes before beginning the show. Thankfully, Seann, Michael, and Alex as well as our crew were able to bounce back and pull everything together at the last hour.
I believe with this being my first time being a television producer, I was very hands-on at getting things corrected quickly and managing my time well in order to get everything prepared for the airing of the show. Dealing with such an experience and bouncing back from it, I am confident that through more experience, I will improve and hone my skills. Yet, no matter what, I remained focused and persistent and pushed for the quality I wanted, which in the end, gave my team one of the greatest things we've ever created.