Juice Jam Special 2018

The day of the Juice Jam special easily marks one of the most hectic and high-pressure days of my entire college career. The special, which was the first show of the semester – and arguably one of the most important – served to announce the highly-anticipated line-up for a campus-wide music event, Juice Jam. I had been collaborating with University Union, Syracuse University’s official student-run programming board, since March, hoping Juice and Java could secure the rights on the August-set announcement. I pre-produced the show as much as possible the evening before; I had fullscreens set for each artist, had VO exported under code names to keep everything confidential, my script was finished in ENPS, and I felt pretty confident about the show. 

I arrived at the studio approximately three hours before the show, which was set for noon, and an event I have genuinely had nightmares about occurred: I was informed that our switcher was broken, therefore rendering our entire studio useless. Postponing or cancelling the show was simply not an option, as we had seriously advertised this across many platforms, and we had to honor the contractual nature of University Union. We tried calling any of the companies that could potentially help fix our problem, but none of them cooperated. Thinking on our feet, a small group of us walked two blocks down to the Newhouse school, where we asked our campus station’s General Manager if we could possibly use one of their studios for the show. After a lot of discussing, he told us we had one option, and brought us to a small studio within Newhouse – one that was much darker and smaller than our usual set. It was better than nothing, but there were multiple issues we now had to deal with in a very small amount of time: our live-stream instruments were set-up in the CitrusTV computer, we needed to be able to send the program to the campus station like we had promised, and the Newhouse control room did not use any of the systems we were accustomed to. 

Two hours to show.

For the next hour, I was sprinting from the CitrusTV studio to Newhouse, trying to transport our cocktail table, Juice and Javamugs, flash drives, and anything and everything I thought could liven up such a gloomy set. As I ran back and forth, I called several members of my team, telling them they needed to get to Newhouse before call time in order to prepare for the chaos to come. In a desperate attempt to make the set look remotely presentably, I woke up one of my other team members and asked her to please go to Target and pick up decorations. 

Ninety minutes to show.

The Newhouse studio did not have any of the videos, graphics, or system for scripts that we needed. My hosts were supposed to reference their questions using the teleprompter, and I myself am accustomed to directing off a rundown. I quickly started delegating tasks to my producers, asking one to convert all of our video to mp4s that we could upload to a flashdrive and then import into the Newhouse control room. At the same time, I needed to find a way to transfer our exact graphics package; I had spent months working to make sure the announcement went specifically to Juice and Java, and part of what makes our show distinct is the look of its graphics. Because my senior producer and I had a good relationship with some of the Newhouse engineers thanks to a class we had previously taken, they helped us convert our graphics package into the new control room. 

One hour to show.

I still had a key issue: the Newhouse control room we got access to did not use AP ENPS, which we depended on to distribute scripts, a rundown, and send stories to teleprompter. I ran back to the CitrusTV studio and pulled up the rundown in the newsroom. Going block by block, I copy-pasted everything my two hosts needed to say and ask, and I placed them in a massive google doc. After sprinting back to the Newhouse control room, I handed my hosts my phone to look at their script, and went to greet the University Union team.

Forty-five minutes to show.

I filled the UU team in on the entire situation, and we realized we had one key issue: the live-stream. We had no way to connect our social media accounts to the control room’s program monitor in order to live stream the show, and most of our viewers were supposed to come in through this platform. One proposal was that we just live-stream the entire show using iPads, but this would remove any camera movement, graphics, VO, or essentially any element that distinguishes the medium of television. I’m still unsure how we reached our final conclusion, but our two teams realized that our best bet was to record two separate show. One would be the show that we sent to the campus station, and it would be recorded beforehand and include our graphics, VO, etc. We would pre-record the show and give it to the station’s General Manager, who would then load it in the system and air it at noon. Then, at noon, we would go through the entire show again – this time using our organizations’ iPads to directly live-stream on social media platforms. This second show would just be one continuing show and would not include any additional visuals. Both of our teams were satisfied with this last resort, but I realized that in order to get the first show done on time, we would have to record in ten minutes as opposed to the half-hour I thought we had.

Ten minutes to Show #1.

My hosts and the UU representatives put their mics on, and I sorted out my script in the control room. I quickly double-checked our imported graphics package, which was a little wonky – our topic bar was in the middle of the graphic instead of the far left – but I appreciated the fact we even had our graphics to begin with. I then turned to my VTR to make sure we had all the videos in order and that she knew how to use the new system. She informed me that the videos were all in, and I thanked her, and then asked if our PSAs were also in. Following the everything-that-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong nature of that morning, I was informed that no, our PSAs were not in. Having PSAs was crucial to the show; we were switching off our interviewees in the middle of the show, as one pair of UU representatives was talking about the artists, and another pair was talking about activities and logistics. The minute-long PSA break in the middle of the show was supposed to give the pairs time to switch seats and swap mics. At this point, I had five minutes to figure out how to handle the situation if we wanted to get both shows recorded on time. I pressed down on the IFBs that communicated with my hosts, informing of the situation, and told them that they needed to banter for a minute while the partners switched places. The idea was that I would take a two-shot of the two of them, and the UU representatives would then switch places offscreen while the two hosts spoke with each other. 

“One minute to show, roll to record everywhere” were words I had missed saying throughout the summer during our break from school and CitrusTV, but I would have never thought that my first time saying them my junior year would be in such a stressful situation. I stood in the Newhouse control room directing a show that had barely come together in a couple of hours, and somehow, despite the fact it was barely like the special I had envisioned the night before, it came together. 

By the time the second show came around, we were all a lot more relaxed. We had done it once, we knew what we were talking about, and because the live-stream was only on an iPad, my work as the director/producer was to solely communicate to my talent through their IFBs.

I learned a lot that day. Most importantly, I learned that nothing is possible without a dedicated team. I don’t think I’ve ever been more grateful to a group of college kids who so easily woke up (relatively) early on a Friday morning to help me. A lot of people helped out that day, and even if they did the seemingly smallest tasks possible, all these components came together to air a show that did not seem possible three hours ago. That day also made me realize that you can never afford to think giving up or postponing a show is an option. With the right team and the proper attitude, things will work out if one tries hard enough. The show must, and always will, go on.