Have you ever wondered how your favorite TV program is made, how it’s broadcasted? Well, the students from the Zurich campus had a chance to find out firsthand how things work when they visited SRF, the Schweizen Radio und Fernsehen, which it the Swiss Radio and Television. The SRF was launched at the end of 1953, however only became popular in 1969 due to the Apollo 11 moon landing.
The visit started at the studio where the daily news program Tagesschau is produced and broadcasted. Their guide, Mrs. Evelyn Schmidlin, explained that all of the speakers who appear on TV are professional journalists, whereas the off-screen voices you hear are usually actors that are reading a prepared text that is written by the editorial staff.
Our students had the chance to watch the rehearsal and live edition of the 12:45 news cast from the control room. They were able to see how the director gives the instructions the staff and journalists. Often the director would use the acronym OS together with a camera number, to indicate which camera was operating.
All news broadcasts are live, including the interaction with the correspondents. In this session there was an interview with a journalist reporting from Brussels. Our students learnt that the journalists pre-agree on 3 questions to minimize time, as every second counts. After the program finished our students were able to meet with the journalist and had the chance to walk around the studio.
The visit continued through the variod TV studios, of which some are very small, while others can reach up to 800 m². Even the props and costume rooms were very interesting to view, as you can find basically everything you need to shoot a movie set in any era!
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