I woke up at 5am Saturday morning for a 6am call time. The sun was no where in sight as my roommate and I walked from West Campus to Late Night Kitchen. Why might you ask? BUTV10!
BUTV10 Productions teamed up with The Hungry Terrier to produce BU’s version of Chopped, The 2nd Annual Chowdown! After months of collaboration between BUTV10’s production coordinator, The Hungry Terrier’s producers, and BU Dining Service. Between writing scripts, securing sponsors, auditioning contestants, devising the secret ingredients, organizing crew and equipment, or designing graphics, everyone had a hand in making the Chowdown AWESOME!
So we arrived on set at 6am and completely transformed Late Night Kitchen into a staged cooking show set.
We fought through our tiredness to produce one crazy episode of live-to-tape television. We filmed each segment separately, with the most difficult being the actual cooking. The three contestants, all BU students, had 45 minutes to transform chicken, apples, broccolini, and the secret ingredient salsa verde into incredible dishes!
The kitchen was hot and the ladies definitely handled the heat! There was a play on Waldorf salad, a Mexican staple, and a savory chicken and waffles spinoff. I was personally very impressed with the contestants and their ability to overcome difficulties and beat the clock.
The crew worked tirelessly to cover all of the action. There were two camera operators in the kitchen as well as a stage manager and host. There was an unmanned, rigged camera over the prep station and a camera on the floor with the judges and other host. To manage all of the camera feeds we used a TriCaster with a director and technical director. Although the we tried to cut the show as much as we could live, the Hungry Terrier crew will be editing everything in post production.
The judges were from Mei Mei’s in South Campus, Sargent Choice Nutrition Center, and Fomu in Allston. All great women from the Boston food scene. They had a tough decision to make, find out who won when the episode airs on butv10.com on April 29th! You can see all of the action I described as well as some KILLER graphics from our amazing graphics coordinator. He has been working on an animated opening sequence as well as cool logos for more than three months!
