Friday, January 30th, 2026, was a big milestone for our final project. This was the day we filmed the first official episode of The What-If Football Talk Show. While I had already filmed my street interviews earlier, this day was all about the studio discussion part of the show.
From Setup to Action
The day started early. At 9:30 in the morning, we arrived at the film studio in Villaviciosa. Fran and I began setting up the studio space, while Dani and John handled the camera setups. Once everything was ready and the whole group had arrived, we started filming.
Not the episode yet though.
Our mentor, Eric, had made it clear that we needed more content for social media alongside the episodes, so that’s exactly where we began. Fran and I were both responsible for creating a game to play with the host and panelists. I went with “guess the player by their transfer”, while Fran chose “guess the player spelled with emojis.” Neither game was easy, which made the content even better. The results were funny, spontaneous, and exactly what we were hoping for.
I filmed my game first, followed by Fran’s. Once the social content was done, it was finally time to film the discussion part of the first episode. Fran and I were both in charge of filming, each working with a large video camera.
When Things Go Wrong
We had booked the studio for four hours, not really knowing how long filming would take. In the end, we were done after about two and a half to three hours. Almost too smooth. And that’s usually when something goes wrong.
After filming, we needed to transfer the footage from the SD cards to a laptop. Fran’s SD card transferred without any issues. Mine, however, showed up completely empty. No footage. Nothing. Which didn’t make sense, because we had double-checked all the settings and even looked at the thumbnails during filming to confirm everything was recording properly.
A bit later, the files suddenly appeared, but only as black screens with sound. Still impossible to open on the MacBook. At that point, it was time to call in the technician.
The conclusion was simple and frustrating at the same time: we hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Sometimes it’s just a formatting issue. It turned out that a previous student had filmed using MOV format instead of MP4, and MacBooks don’t support certain MOV files. Luckily, Dani had CapCut Pro, which does support this format. Once we opened the files there, all footage was safe.
Lesson learned for next time: always check the video format as part of the setup before filming.
Looking Back
Despite the technical stress at the end, the filming day itself was a success. The energy was good, the content turned out exactly how we hoped, and everyone worked incredibly well together.
Below, I’ve added some photos and videos from the filming day for a little behind-the-scenes look.
On to editing, and on to the next episode.
The Game with Dani.
The Game with Anton.
