Eastenders:Live episode

On 19/02/10 Eastenders was 25 years old and so filmed their first live episode which lasted for 30 minutes. There were around 58 cameras used so that they were able to succeed in doing this as obviously they were unable to edit as it was being aired live. There were talks of the episode lasting an hour but they decided to settle with 30 minutes and I am guessing this is because it would have been extremely difficult to keep the continuity throughout.

The events taking place in the episode were a follow up of Thursday night's episode which lasted an hour as it was pre recorded so was edited. Thursday night's episode continued onto Friday night's episode which was filmed live on the night. Thursday's episode was pre recorded and filmed around 6 weeks ago and the next episode was filmed another 6 weeks later. The cast and crew must have ensured that the continuity remains the same and that the characters do not change in appearance over the 6 weeks like their hair style, figure etc.

As a media student I was trying to spot differences between the two episodes but I did not notice anything different, all the outfits and everything in the mise en scene remained the same which was amazing.

I also watched the aftermath of the live episode and they showed you clips of the cast and crew preparing to film the live episode. The characters had to use a small transporter to move from place to place rapidly as obviously the exterior set of the queen vic is about 2 mins away from the interior set so this transfer had to be done quickly and was timed during rehearsals so that it appears realistic to the viewer.

Towards the end where Bradley had to jump from the top of the queen vic, a stunt man was used instead of the main character. The shots were filmed from Bradley on the roof, then the stunt man jumped and they planned to do a shot of Bradley on the floor. But if this was a pre recorded episode then they would have been able to film it at different times in different shots and edit it.

However, this episode was live and the stunt man had landed on a inflated padding and the crew had 40 seconds to remove the inflated padding and the stunt man from the shot and replace him with Bradley and a pile of blood beneath him. During these busy 40 seconds for the crew, other shots had to be inserted to keep the continuity and all this was done incredibly.

From watching the live episode and the aftermath I realised how difficult it is to keep continuity live without editing with different camera shots and the way Eastenders managed to succeed in doing this was truly fantastic.

This is a presentation I came across on youtube of all the mistakes that occured during the live episode due to the fact that they were unable to edit. This just backs up my previous points regarding the continuity etc.