Studio Production Unit- Sound Practice and Workshop

This week, unfortunately Hans (who will be delivering our studio production workshops) was ill and couldn't make it to this weeks workshop. However, we continued with the workshop as normal, this time led by our course leader Helen.
Although last time Hans gave us seemingly random roles (I was given the role of P.A) we were allowed to this time operate as the roles we will be having in the final studio production. I found this to be the best way to go about things, as it kind of gave me an opportunity to experience how I will be working with Mike Hoad on the actual studio day, and see what can potentially go wrong, or how I could improve my performance beforehand. This should ultimately allow me and everybody else to work to the best of our ability come the day of the live studio production.

the sound board that Mike Hoad and myself were using to adjust mic volumes.

Our jobs as sound guys during the workshop was to keep an eye on the radio mic levels that the cast of the show were wearing. We did this by physically listening to the show as it took place, and adjusting a particular guests radio mic when they were too loud/quiet.
This was quite challenging, as we were using quite an old piece of equipment, and it was also my first time using said piece of equipment. By the end of the day though, I was confident enough with this sound board, and so was Mike.
I feel that the best way to get used to using this type of equipment is to simply practice with it again and again in person, and in that regard, I think this particular workshop was very useful.

A major problem that both me and Mike picked up on during our work was that at certain points during the shows recording, we kept getting microphone feedback and static. We did our best to eliminate this by lowering a particular microphone when it was not in use, but it didn't help too much.
After some brief research (and our own personal knowledge), we realized that this static that would interfere every so often was probably caused by the guests mobile phone signals interfering with the radio mics signals.
A simple way to eliminate this problem on the day will be to simply make sure that each guest switches their mobile phones off before entering the set. This way the possibility of signal interference is minimal.

This experience got me thinking about the ways in which radio mics work however, and as such I decided to do a bit more investigation into the way they work, and ways in which we can use them to their full potential on the day of the live studio production. I did this by watching a few youtube videos, created by people that have actually worked in the sound industry.