Light, Camera, Action!

This is the second time I had participated in One-North Festival with Little One. Light, Camera, Action! is one of the tours conducted during the One-North Festival. When I find this tour available, I was pretty excited. How often do you get to visit a multimedia studio? Much less to have a tour conducted in one. This trip, we are going to 3- Infinite Studios, AMX Audiophiles and Globecast.

What is One-North Festival?
The One-North Festival, organised by A*STAR and JTC, celebrates how Research, Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise are bringing us new and exciting possibilities for the future. In short, this festival celebrates Science and Technology. In the festival, you can expect workshops and open houses.

In my opinion, most open houses and all the lab tours are more suitable for upper Secondary students and above. Nevertheless, there are some open houses, eg "Light, Camera, Action!" which are suitable for primary school kids and above. Comparing this year and the last, not much activities are suitable for the toddlers and pre-schoolers. Like last year, we participated 1 tour only. Although we had ample time to spend the whole day there then, most of the open houses were not suitable for pre-schoolers. There was an outdoor carnival where Little One spent time playing. This year, as we went on a weekday, we could only participate 1 tour in the afternoon. Any way, most of the open houses and lab tours were only available that day.

The Tour

We arrived to Mediapolis in a chartered bus. Below is the gathering point.  While waiting for the tour to start, we were told this was the place  they filmed Masterchef. We were split into groups according to the bus we traveled in. We started visiting various studios depending on which group we were in.

Green screen

AMX Audiophiles

The tour begins at AMX Audiophiles where you will experience what an audio mixing facility looks like and how a sound designer uses music and effects to bring a TV commercial to life. We were shown to the theater studio and how the room was made soundproof. We were shown a trailer without any effects and music. Then, then other clips in which sound effects, music and recorded voice introducing the trailer is added one by one to make it complete. Such a trailer may look simple but lots of efforts are made to ensure it looked more attractive and appealing to the audience. 

After that, we started to explore the recording suite which was adjacent to it. We have seen similar recording studio but this is a smaller one.

Top: Theater studio
Bottom: Recording Suite adjacent to the Theatre studio

Infinite Studios

I guess this must be the studio that Little One loves most. She kept photobombing with her balloon. Reason being, she can see herself on the TV screen in front of her. Here, she can see how a green screen works. Many children were fascinated with this place as well.  This is the high end Virtual Reality Studio. The cameras are fully automated and  are operated by the control room adjacent to it. All the cameras, except one, were in a fixed location. The exceptional one is attached to a curved slider. All top of each cameras were monitors that would show the presenter/s and guests their cues. This is so that no matter which camera they face, they would be able to read the cues on the monitor which is on top of the camera. I always thought they still hold up a board of cues! How backward am I!  In this studio, one can be "transported" to any place virtually. How fascinating!

Top :Virtual Realisty Studio
Bottom left: We are being "teleported"
Bottom right: the control room

Globecast

This is where you will see how TV networks broadcast their channels in a "live transmission" environment! We learnt about cable programming, recasting, editing and many more! There were editing studios and they also do live telecast and are able to provide commentary in different languages. Sorry that I could not provide more information about this studio as I had to take Little One to the washroom.

Photography is not allowed inside Globecast

TV Film Set
We were then brought to the film set of the TV series, Tanglin. This set is a specially-built double-storey set for this drama. This structure, which took two weeks to design, sits in a studio with a floor area of nearly 800sqm at Infinite Studios, and has been built with the utmost thought and care.

We got to explore what it is like to be one. We explored the cafeteria and the home that was located on the second floor. Everything here is real except for the food. We are also fortunate to see Sherly Devonne Ng up close, although she was introduced as Pam. She is very pretty!

Little One enjoyed exploring the set with me. She even played with the fake eggs in the fridge and also pretend to be a cashier at the cafe!

Double storey set

Left: TV set tour
Middle: at the second story
Right: 'Pam' at the set addressing us.

I strongly recommend to visit if given a chance as it was very interesting and enlightening. 

Linking with~