At the beginning of the summer, two of my best friends and I decided to create a television show for Wareham Community Television. At first, I had an idealist viewpoint of how everything would go. I thought we would be able to throw together funny skits and manage cameras, sound, filming, editing, and uploading. It seemed like a great idea, and simple until we went through with the process.
Let me say that creating a 30-minute episode is a lot more work than I intended. My vision did not match the efforts that had to be made to be successful. The fun part is writing your skit but following through with the process requires a lot of preparation. At first, I thought the three of us would come together whenever we could and film what we came up with on our own time. Then, when we finished towards the end of the week, we would put together all of the skits into a long non-transitional 30-minute comedy. As you might be thinking, it did not work out at all.
Let’s just say, the first night we filmed our episode, we spent 4 hours running around trying to understand each other and the only skit we filmed was our friend microwaving a hamburger. I was disappointed in myself and wondered what the magical formula was to create content that people would find interesting, as well as entertaining. The missing piece, on my end, was being organized and being an effective communicator. These were skills I knew I had to learn how to master but have ignored for too long. My motto is “everything will fall into place,” but that’s not necessarily true. If you aren’t the one making things fall into place, they will most likely fall apart on your end of the deal.
We decided to have weekly meetings, film specific skits on days we could all meet. Each episode had a theme and if the skits didn’t fit the theme, they wouldn’t be put on the show. The amount of time and energy that went into preparing for a skit that would be 3 minutes could take a few hours. Sometimes people wouldn’t agree, sometimes we’d forget things, and there were days when it was difficult to follow through with the plans. Still, the three of us manage to make it work out. The thoughts running through my head once we were organized was “how do people create films?”. I guess this experience has made me realize the value of the entertainment we have available to us.
The best parts of being your own content creator is the amount of freedom you have to express ideas. You get to see and work through each stage of the process. It starts by thinking up a concept then turns into a vision that you can communicate to others. Then your vision comes to life with the help of everyone who understands your thought process. Some may think that seeing your work when it's finished is the best part, I think when you are in the moment creating with others is the best part. It is great to see how everyone adds to the central concept and builds off of it. It makes the experience that much greater.
I am still not perfect at organizing and communicating, but I realized that these are the most important aspects of creating a piece of work that you want to be proud of and excited about. Also, I realized that although our production is small, I know I couldn’t do it alone. I love working with all the creative people that help me see new perspectives and come up with solutions that I know I wouldn’t be able to think of alone. This experience has been like no other experience, and I hope that people watch Micky B. All Day. It’s a fun show that I think people will find amusing.
