Digital News Production - Work Shop 3 - Live Production and Green Screen

Today we had a workshop for two different things, the first was a practise for the "Live Production".

We all got split into two groups, in my group was Kate, Sei Kai, Hannah, Tim, Sam B, Ruby and Charlie.  In our groups we all chose different allocated role in the production, Kate took charge with the director role, I did the vision mixing, Hannah managed the sound, Sei Kai was the floor manager, Tim and Sam B were the two camera men, Ruby was did the lighting and was the interviewee and Charlie was also worked the lighting and was the interviewer.

 In our tight schedule of a couple of hours we had to create and shoot a "Live" interview scene. We all decided to have Charlie interview Ruby about the course. So we made a small set, we put Charlie and Ruby on Chairs facing 45 degrees of each other, so they weren't fully facing each other but were slightly facing the cameras. In-between them we put some studio boxes and lighting boxes to create a nice background and theme, we also pull a black curtain behind them, leaving a couple of ripples in the curtain to add more affect to the shots.

With my role I had three screens to look at, the first screen was the for the shot previews what the shot looks like before I put it on to the main screen. The second screen was the active screen this showed the shot which was live and what everyone would see on TV. The third screen was the recording screen this showed the active shot and recored when the shot switched and the sequences. I had to look at the two different shots and make sure they were all the same with the white balance, exposure and focused. Also I overlooked the shots and had a say with what I thought the shots should look like and if they needed adjusting. During the pre shoot I took charge over a couple of shots while Kate was busy with other stuff. I decided to change the shot which Sam B was on as I thought the original was too much of a profile shot of Ruby. I got Sam B to move the camera to behind Charlie looking at Ruby, this got a more full view of Ruby and what see looked like when answering the questions. I also helped in arranging the lighting as the first position of a light made Ruby over exposed and didn't mach Charlie's exposure. So I moved one light onto the back curtain to create a depth of field and moved another light on an angle of Ruby and pulled it back and set it to a flood light instead of a spot light. This soften the look of Ruby's shot and made her stand out from the black background. 

With the production side of the workshop, I was a little unhappy with how things went for a coupe of reasons, first a could of my ideas and inputs were overseen and ignored. This was a bit frustrating, however to overcome this problem I decided to just go ahead with my ideas and see how they fit with the production, luckily my ideas went thought ok and didn't cause any annoyance with others. Another reason I wasn't too happy was, when we actually filmed the "Live" production, during the mixing Kate dieted me on when she wanted me to switch the shots, and I thought with a couple of switches she did them far too quick and made the film a little back and forth. However this wasn't a big upset as we had another go at filming and I did some switches when I thought it looked better.

Over all with the "Live" production I learnt a lot about how "Live" production are filmed, from the pre production to actual production. With the pre I learnt that you need to plan everything your doing really carefully and fully and make sure you have every situation covered so nothing can go wrong. I also learnt with the pre that organisation is key, keep things together and know what to do at every point, like with setting up camera shots, it's better to think about what shots you want before getting the camera out, this makes the production more thought out and adds value knowing what your going to do next. Also thinking shots out helps to create a sequence of shots (shot list) so that the camera men know what to do and when to move to the next show, without them doing it too daly or late and it appearing on the main screen.

I also leant that with the vision mixing you need to also know what shows are coming up and in what order, so having a shot list on hand is very important to know what's coming next so you don't change the shot at the wrong time. Further more I learnt that being vision mixed you need a good communication with the directer as you'll be working closely during the production, making sure you both listen to each other and communication is key as you both need to be in the same mind set when working together.

After the "Live" part of the work shop we moved on to green screen, in this work shop we were introduced with a green screen stage and had to as a class, fully light the green screen stage, light up the actress (Kate) and film a sequence which will fit the background scenery chosen.

 In the lighting part of the task, we all found it very hard to properly light up the background without leaving dark patches and then lighting Kate without leaving shadows which wouldn't fit the background chosen. First time round Mike took charge and tried to light up the green screen and Kate correctly, he found this very hard and wasn't quite successful. Then Sam B and I was looking online to try and find a better way in successfully light a green screen. We found a way to do it so we decided to take over and try and see if it works. We moved some of the light and turned others off as we thought that they were too many used, we put too main light of the background to light that up, placed one behind Kate to make her stand out from the background. Placed another in front of her to light her up, however in doing so we created too many shadows behind her and on the floor. So we tried to take some out by shining two light onto the floor, this would hopefully both light up the floor and get rid of some of the shadows. In doing this we saw that with erasing one shadow we created another, this was frustrating. After a while of messing with the lights we were able to remove most of the extra shadows, but still had a couple of shadows which were needed to be removed. However we had ran out of time and had to leave it, to continue with the post production.

What I learn from this was that you need a lot of time to set up green screen, as it is very time consuming and need a lot of work to get right. In our group we want to do a green screen scene, with a presenter in a news room studios. Now what I learnt about setting up the lighting is you don't need too many light as too many create more unwanted shadows. Also lighting up the actor is hard to do and you need to make sure to light them up and bring them out from the background to make the shot not look flat. So when it come to filming our green screen I'll take what i've learnt form the work shop and try to apply it as best as I can to make sure it look as good as possible.

After we'd finish setting up the lighting we did a film sequence, in which we need Kate to do something so that when we added that to the chosen background it would look good and real. During the production I took charge as the directer with the help of Sam B on camera and Sei Kai as floor manager. I directer Kate how I wanted her to enter the screen, what to do while on screen and how to exit the screen. I then help Sam B in sizing up the shot and how to shot the sequence. After that we filmed it throughout twice to get the best performance.

I liked doing this as I got to be the directer which is one of my preferred jobs as I like to be in the place of the directer, taking charge and being involved in everything, the acting, camera sizes and shots and the lighting. I learnt that during a green screen production you need to make sure that the action being after out by the after matches the background and that they don't interfere with each other. Like if the background is a forrest full of trees, I need to make sure that the after doesn't walk into a tree, or if the background had a running dog, i'd need to make sure that the path of the dog and the after don't cross, otherwise it would look unprofessional.