Studio Review (Change April 17th)

As I discussed in a previous post, I had a recent experience recording a tv show at the local studio. There were some things that I was really happy with, and there were a few things that I was really not happy with...

Things that went well...

Coming into the studio to prelight the day before was a huge advantage. The last thing that we would want to have to do with our guests is mess with lighting in front of them. It was good to be set, beforehand.

Being prepared as a group - in general - was a huge advantage in the studio. We had everything planned out: who had what job, who was responsible for what, parking for guests, escorting the guests, multiple copies of the written script, lighting, camera position, visual strategies, set design, redundency plan (my two cameras), etc.

One of the most important things that went well was my redundency strategy. Having my two cameras there REALLY came in handy when things went haywire (see below). Also, having Adobe Premiere to come to the rescue was really beneficial. I find that being able to produce media, independent of any job that I have, is essential, because it is the ultimate back up plan for every project. Period.

On top of those three things,  everyone really stayed on task and executed their jobs well. Everyone that I helped set up on camera did a great job, and the two girls - without my help - did a great job. I was very thankful to be a part of a group who had one or two others that were willing to put as much into projects as I do. We had a plan, we prepared early, we executed the plan, and - when everything stopped working - we still came out with a great final product.

Things that went.. not so well...

Everything was going according to plan until we found out that our recording in the studio had two huge problems:

Problem 1: Our footage failed to capture digitally after four minutes.
Problem 2: The sound was terrible. There was a loud buz that made the audio unacceptable by our standards.
Problem 1 was a huge deal because we needed time to edit, and we had three weeks to do so. Fortunately, though, it was just a matter of making the tape digital. UNfortunately, we had two weeks of - for one valid reason or another - not being able to transfer the footage. We had two class periods of helping other people record, which left us with 4 classes to capture and edit. When other groups weren't recording, a production class from Shepherd University was using the studio (this had a cable that we needed one week). This left us with the last week of school to edit the footage (that we didn't have digitally). The first class didn't work, because Final Cut would not import one of my files. On top of that, the tape was not brought to class for our last chance to capture it, before our last class.

Becoming very tired of everything going wrong, we made the decision to work on Adobe Premiere at my apartment, and one of our members was to transfer the footage outside of class to have it ready by our last class period. This was done, but the quality was terrible. I'm not sure what happened, but it was our last shot at getting that footage digitally, and something in the process failed, miserably.

Then, we ran into a problem of aquiring footage from a mac formatted hard drive onto a PC and otherwise. So, I had to find a program that would let me view and extract information from one filesystem to another. After this, we used my two cameras to create four virtual angles. We were creating shots for standard definition output, so I was able to take advantage of the 1920x1080 frames of my high definition cameras. We created a two shot, three shot, full shot, and had close-ups with my DSLR. We essentially recreated what options we would have had to work with (as far as camera angles) had everything gone as planned.

With this, I taught some members of the group how to use the multi-camera editor in Premiere with the live cutting function. It was like going back into the studio and making the calls live. We were able to reference what shots we chose from the original footage to make our footage as similar as possible.

The problem with all of this leads us to Problem 2. The audio that we were working with was on-camera, so I had to bring the audio from the bad studio footage into our project and sync it. Then, we had to address the terrible buzzing that was making the studio audio unuseable. To do this, I opened the audio that was already synced in Adobe Premiere in Adobe Soundbooth. In Soundbooth, I gave the program a sample with just the buzzing noise for it to analyze and use as a print of what to take out. Then, I worked with how much of the buzz would be removed. I got the audio to a point where the buzzing was JUST gone, and kept it there. After exporting, the audio automatically updated into my Premiere project. (I love Adobe integration workflow..)

After that, I had to address an issue with the tape camera that got the wide shot. There was a place where the recording skipped, and that video is what we were basing the audio and video sync to, because it recorded the entire show. (My DSLR had to stop recording halfway through, due to the FAT 32 4GB filesize problem that our first gen DSLRs suffer from.) After finding it, I had to re-sync the DSLR footage and new and improved audio to it. I found a way to cut it and have the part of the video still make sense. I covered the cut by switching to another angle... It worked well ;)

Conclusion

In my experience with video, I have learned to integrate contingency plans into each part of my production process. (From pre-production to post-production.) This includes recording with multiple microphones to multiple sources, having a multitude of extra batteries as well as - sometimes hard to find - ac adapters for each piece of equipment (including my DSLR), bringing back up lights, and always thinking of multiple plans, just in case one doesn't work. My computer is my ultimate backup, and I always have other recourses to tap into, if that doesn't work. I'm glad that this planning wound up being put to good use in our studio experience :)

TV Show

Our team divided into three groups to produce three shows over the last few weeks. I was in the first group: Group A. The show that we produced was based on wildlife preservation. I worked with some great team members who had some connections and really did their part to make the show happen and run smoothly.

Before the shoot, I was in the studio and helped set up the set - gathering chairs, assembling props, and working on which background would be best for our purposes. I then worked with the rest of the team to figure out lighting options. I tried dimming our main set lights to balance them with the on-set blue lights that we had as props, but we simply didn't have enough light coming out of the props to balance with even dimmed set lights.

I decided that we needed a front fill right in front of our set to brighten them. I remembered the inverse square law while doing so, which helped me make the decision; I wanted a light that wasn't bright enough to unnaturally light the background, but bright enough to reach the people in our set. So, I had the light far enough back that it would affect the people, but not the set as much.

Having a two camera setup in the studio was important so that we would not become lazy camera people or directors. I wanted a four camera setup, so I volunteered to bring two of my own cameras to give us more than two options in the editing process. However, we operated as if we didn't have the extra cameras, so that if anything went wrong with the additional cameras, we wouldn't have relied on them. Also, as stated above, we didn't want to get lazy: we wanted the challenge of recording a discussion between four people with only two cameras and live editing.

Knowing this, I wanted to make sure that both camera men felt comfortable with their jobs. I went through the basics with them, and helped them each with things that they weren't sure about. I also checked and observed everything about the setup of each camera, before leaving the camera men to do their job. One thing that I wanted to point out - to both of the camera operators - was where the locks were for panning and tilting. I realized that not everyone knew that in our previous endeavors, but it's an essential part of operating a camera.

Once the camera operators were set up, I set up my two tripods and cameras. Then, I set my focus, white balance, exposure, and other various settings to best match the studio cameras. One camera would be an establishing shot of the entire production. Because I was recording in high definition, I knew that we could use that establishing shot as a backup to create two and three shots of our set in a standard definition workspace.

After setting up the first camera that I would be operating, I set up my second camera for closeups. I would monitor both, and focus on the camera getting closeups (single shots) of people. I ran into some tripod and space challenges, but the image stabilization on my lens (Canon EF 100mm 2.8 L) was a tremendous help.

The studio didn't have the old 600 firewire ports, so I had to take the footage home to capture it. Once captured, I organized the files from both cameras that I operated, and now we're ready to edit. We're still working on the studio files to be able to edit, but the two extra cameras that I brought in give us options. If the studio recording were to not work, we would have enough from my two cameras to create the entire show and emulate a three camera setup. If we can't use my footage, we are still set up to go with the footage from the studio cameras. If - best case scenario - we can use all of the footage, my colleagues and I will have three angles to work with! (The studio recording was edited live, so those two cameras only show one at a time - counting as one camera.)

I also helped with other miscellaneous tasks before the show, getting things ready, but the important stuff - to me - was what is mentioned above.