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.