Workshops
Workshops
Gillingham Football Club
For today’s workshop we went to Gillingham football club where we got to use the location to film a short news package. This was working as a practice run for our actual projects; therefore, we worked in our production groups, this was a good idea as we got to understand how the individual group members come together to form a team. As part of this experience, we got to sit in on an actual press conference with one of the players. This was really beneficial as it helped me structure the questions, I had to form for our interview with one of our contributors. I was also able to find out what kind of questions to ask and how to ask them to get the intended response. We used the press conference to form our news package. We knew we did not have long to film so decided to cover the story of how the club are coming back from a rocky start of the season and their feelings leading into the weekend’s game. This was a really accessible story for us to cover. We also staged a ‘fan interview’ to make the report more of a package, this added more interesting aspects to it and also involved other opinion which is important within the news.
I learnt a lot from this location trip, as we got to sit in on an actual press conference I go first hand experience in how interviews are conducted and the type of questions asked. I found this very helpful when it came to writing the questions for some of our contributors, as I had never written interview questions before I think experiencing this helped me. We also got the opportunity to film b-roll which helped us understand more about the type of coverage we need to accomodate the story we wanted to tell, this was also helpful when it came to shooting our own news package as we already had experience of shooting coverage.
Green Screen Practice, teleprompter and vision mixing
For this workshop we spilt into our groups and had Ferg, the technician, show us how to use a green screen correctly. Although this may seem self-explanatory there is a lot that goes into using a green screen which I did not know before. We learnt the importance of ensuring the subject in front of the green screen in completely in focus, this is important as it will make the outline where the subject meets the green screen crisp once the background has been changed. I also learnt that having even lighting across the whole green screen would also ensure that the superimposed background would be completely even and as real as possible. An even lighting set up would make sure all the green in the background would appear the same shade on the camera and therefore also in after effects, this meant that the new background could import easily with little confusion. I also learn that it is important to have a backlight to separate the subject from the background so when importing the new background in the subject appears 3D and separate from the background, this looks more professional and stops the footage from looking flat by adding dimension.
During this workshop we also learnt how to correctly set up the teleprompter, before this workshop I was unaware that the teleprompter sits Infront of the camera lens, this is something new which I have learn. This makes sense to me now as I understand how the news presenters can keep eye contact with the camera during a PTC while not changing their eye levels. The set-up process was fairly simple but quite fiddly. It is clever how the teleprompter uses a sheet of glass and an iPad to reflect the script back to the presenter. I was already familiar with the teleprompter app as I had used this previously but using the actual teleprompter was a new experience.
On top of this we also took a brief look at vision mixing using the mixing board to change the ‘live’ feed and adding graphics over the top of subjects Infront of the green screen. I was unfamiliar with the job role of vision mixing before this workshop however, now I know more about it, it is something I am interested to learn more about. The precision and skill of vision mixers is amazing.
This was a useful workshop as it opened up the possibility of using a green screen in our final news packages as our studio space. Although this is not what my group opted for, it was still a useful skill to learn for future projects e.g., As-Live and the potential of using a virtual set.
Unreal Intro
Today we had an introduction to unreal, this was interesting as it raised the possibility for using artificial sets and backgrounds e.g., news studios. For this we loaded up the app and practiced importing objects and props then moving them around to get used to the system. We were being creative and I managed to build a very basic castle with some bushes and a rock outside. I also added in a door, green grass floor, and a brick texture onto the walls. I learnt how to drop objects into the world, move them around, make them bigger and rotate them. Although this is all very basic it was a good start to using the programming. I learnt a lot about the possibilities of using this software to creative artificial sets and the benefits this could be to low budget productions. On top of this, the second story of our news package is based around the development of a new virtual production studio. The knowledge I gained about the software from this workshop helped me understand more about virtual productions and often they use the same software, this was beneficial as I was not completely clueless to the story we wanted to tell ad was able to help other members of the group form questions to ask for the contributor.
After Effects: Green Screen
Today we looked at how to change the background on green screen footage. We began with a very basic way of doing this which involved importing green screen footage we then dragged the key light effect onto this footage. Using the eyedropper tool, we selected the green background. We then changed the setting to screen matte and changed the clip white setting under screen matte until the black is as dark as possible and the white is as white as possible. After we changed the setting to intermediate result, added a new solid with a different colour background or we could use an image. What we did notice was that there was some green spill around the outline of the subject, so we used the key light advanced spill suppressor tool to reduce the effects of this.
We also looked at a more complicated way of doing this, this involved using the shape tool to create a rectangle around a person in a scene stood Infront of a green screen. We then used the pen tool to make the shape around the person smaller which meant that there was less of the image that would need alerting. As this video had movement in it, we needed to make sure we did not cut out the person's arm. We then used the same technique of using the key light effect. We got the original image open in another ‘tab’ and used the eyedropper tool on the original image to get the greenest green possible. We then used this green to adjust the screen map, we had to try and make the white as white as possible and the black as black as possible which would mean that the differentiation between the background and the person would be crisp. After this we put the setting into intermediate result where we could add a new background. We also added the key light advanced spill suppressor to manage any green spill around the person.
Location Shoot 1:
For our first location shoot towards our news package we shot in the Studio 2 Green Room at Maidstone TV studios. This was helpful as it had the correct colour scheme and branding we were aiming for. It also had lots of seating which made it appeal like a studio space, this is why we chose this location to be our studio set up.
As producer I did not have a main role during production however on the shoot I helped with the lighting, held the teleprompter, spoke to contributors and made sure they had seen their questions beforehand, and I also acted as a floor manager, keeping everything organised and moving forward at a good pace.
We did not face many issues with this shoot however, at times it was important for me to ensure the team kept working at a good pace to keep the shoot progressive as we has time limitations. There was an issue with one of the camera dropping frame rates so we did have to shoot some of the footage in HD which is different from the other 4K files. However, this is not a major issue.
I learnt a lot from this shoot regarding time management and keeping the team on track. Although the shoot did overrun by 30 minutes which I am disappointed with we had to work with the space we had and after a few shots realised there was a better framing to use and decided to re-shoot the previous shots. But I will take away valuable time management skills from this shoot to ensure the crew keep within time limitation and so the contributors are not held up for longer than they have agreed.
Location Shoot 2:
For our second location shoot we were shooting in Studio 1 to get coverage of the Year 1 students using the cameras in a workshop. This was a fairly quick and simple shoot. The only issue we faced with this shoot was that the studio was very dark which made the footage dark. This meant that gain was added to make the images brighter which ultimately affects the quality of our work but in this instance we only had one shot to film this b-roll so we have to work with what we got under these circumstances.
Location Shoot 3:
For our third and final shoot we were filming in the new HI3 studio. This was the first time we had seen the studio with all of the virtual reality equipment set up. We had a plan of what we wanted to shoot prior to arriving however, after speaking to Gavin we realised we were able to use the virtual set to create an intro, we thought this would be more visually appealing and had to take this opportunity which meant our prior plans were disregarded.
The time management for this shoot was a lot better. However, we did run into one problem, unfortunately the built in ND filter on the camera was knocked on. As the camera operator was only using this camera for the second time, he was unfamiliar with the ND filter and thought the issue was how dark the room was. To correct this mistake the gain was put up to brighten the image, this has affected the quality of the final piece but was an easy mistake to make and we have all learnt from this.
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