Technical Setup: three iso-cameras, audio via PA and wireless mic on one loud speaker, NAT sound on reverse-angle camera.
This ‘preview’ was put together rather quickly to show at the upcoming City Council meeting where the organizers and parents of Matthew Axelson would speak. If you listen, you’ll notice that the audio is not consistent. I was not able to work on the audio which wasn’t recorded too well. On the final 90 minute edited program, the audio was much better (I had more time), and the final program is worthy of another award in one of several contests in our genre.
We used three independent ENG-configured Sony DSR-500/570 cameras. Two camerapersons used one tripod arm with attached servo control for better movement control. The one cameraperson that did not use the arm (it was the cameraperson’s option) has quite a bit of jerky motion in its movements!We had no person-to-person communication…just given shot assignments and hoped everything was done right!
We came into this production to just cover the event and then go. If we were to make this a documentary of the memorial, we would have started on the project months prior to the dedication ceremony. We could not do a documentary because our schedule was pretty filled up, and this event was not a fully managed city function. By using just three cameras (no production assistants) and just our senior staff, we captured the event very well.
The Parks and Recreation Department managed the audio, and during our setup, our feed to the first camera was a bit distorted. This feed looped through to the second camera which shared the general centered-back position. One our second channel was our wireless mic positioned on top of one of the loud speakers of their PA system. And, we had our third camera (reverse angle and cutaway shot responsibilities) with a third wireless receiver for the mic on the speaker, and NAT sound….GOOD THING, TOO! That camera was able to pick up the choir, bugler and bagpipe player!
Editing was performed on our Pinnacle Liquid Silver with a Dell Dual Processor computer. Even though we timecode-synchronized (free-run) all three cameras, I used the audio and visuals to synch all the source footage because I couldn’t find the feature to synch the source footage! Without going too deep into the editing, I just put each camera’s video and audio (2 channels) into the timeline/sequence and hacked it up and eventually, I took each segment and dropped into the master video track.
The full, 90 minute final program is available, online at http://cupertino.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=5&clip_id=452 . Please check it out and let me know what you think. It was an historical event since it was Cupertino’s first and only memorial (the city is about 10 square miles and 54,000 residents), and I feel that the coverage was done well aside from the few technical issues, some fixed in editing.BTW, I attended the meetings for the event, I was camera one, the close-up camera, and I edited it. I hope you like it.
equipment:
(2) sony dsr-500; (1) sony dsr-570; (3) shure UP-4 receivers; (1) shure SM58 wireless handheld mic; (3) various sachtler tripods; (1) pinnacle liquid silver nle bundled in a dell dual-processor pc with a/v breakout rack mounted hardware