You've probably seen some behind-the-scenes footage of people counting down the on-air talent for your favorite daytime TV shows or newscasts. These wonderful people are floor directors. I had the privilege of being one of those wonderful people when I worked in production. It's a really cool job and it feels very "showbiz-like". Here's my experience as a news floor director and everything you need to know about it.
5-4-3-2-1! News broadcasts are all about timing. You have to be on-air at a certain time and also off the air at a certain time. With all the other production employees in the control room, aside from the camera operators, it is your responsibility to make sure on-air talent in the studio knows how much time they have and keep the communication going between the technical director and the talent.
As a floor director, you will need a headset and a rundown. The headset will help you hear and speak to the technical director in the control room. The technical director will give you all the time cues over the headset. As the floor director, you relay those time cues to the talent. Although the talent can hear the technical director in their ear with their IFBs, you are bound to deal with some type of technical difficulties when dealing with technology. The rundown basically shows what camera the anchors need to look at for each story. Having a floor director in the studio is beneficial for everyone working in news. With the necessities to floor direct, the experience will be so easy and enjoyable!
There are quite a few time cues a floor director must relay to the talent. Of course, there's your countdown before the show starts. The talent needs time to get ready and get in place. A floor director can start counting down 10 minutes before the show. I would yell "10 minutes out," "5 minutes out," "1 minute out, "30 seconds out" and so on until I get to the countdown of five seconds to cue the talent. The talent also needs time cues for how much time is left in a package. A news package is normally the lengthiest story in a newscast. It provides a little break for the anchors during a show so they need to know when they are coming back. There's also the countdown before we come back from the commercial break. The talent needs to constantly be reminded of how much time is left before they are on screen again.
Floor directors also tell the talent which camera they should look at or where they need to be in the studio. Anchors have a rundown of the newscast, but before a show, I'd still remind them of which camera they should look at first. There are normally three cameras in the studio, and at my station, it wasn't too normal for anchors to remain stationary for an entire newscast. When the talent did look at a different camera or move, I would either point to the camera they needed to look at or walked over to the camera and raised my hand to get their attention to move to that camera. I would only do that during the times the anchors were on-air in the studio. If we were in a break or in a package, I would just relay the information to the talent.
As a floor director, it's so important you pay attention to your rundown and listen to the technical director. Not only will you do your job well, it really helps the talent out because they have a lot to focus on. Just like floor directors, they have a rundown and hear the technical directors, but they're also reading off a teleprompter, paying attention to floor directors and camera operators, while also remaining professional on-screen. They could use all the help they can get with timing and cameras. As I've said before, everyone wants a clean show. There's no doubt you will do great and be appreciated by the talent just by following these simple steps.
And that's all I have for floor directing during a newscast! It seems pretty simple, which it can be, but just like every other job, things can get a little difficult when the scripts change and stories are killed. There are also hand signals floor directors do during a live show which I believe this video helped explain well. Nevertheless, it's really cool to be one of those wonderful people that are floor directors!
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