32 hours of footage in 4days – workflow

[Bill Davis]

I’m going to chime in here since I spent quite a few years as the primary videographer for the National Speakers Association – as well as having shot more “conventions” than you can shake a stick at.

If you have little experience in this particular form of torture, good luck.

Observations from time in the trenches: NO presentation will EVER proceed flawlessly as the presenter intended. NO camera operator – even the most skilled and competent – can approach anywhere close to 100% quality camera work in an typical hotel ballroom environment. (if the ceiling can lighting inconsistencies don’t get you – the room RF, the speaker who decides it’s more PERSONAL to walk out halfway into the audience where there’s NO LIGHT and hold a LONG conversation bending over a participant who’s positioned right behind a team of service personnel who totally block your shot of the speaker for five full minutes in the middle of the most critical content.)

I could spend HOURS telling you stories of shoot after shoot where even after 5 YEARS of experience and ALL the technical skills and equipment I needed, I STILL managed to find myself in situations where I got marginal results.

And don’t get me started on the clients. They’ll tell you that they’ll be there to help answer questions, and to review the raw footage and make the paper edit decisions, and they’ll promise you to work with the hotel AV people to secure better lighting/sound/scheduling/fixed table setup/power access/no large shot blocking centerpieces on the tables/ AD NAUSEUM. But you’ll STILL face problems in ALL of theses areas and more. And it will be TOTALLY up to you to notice and react to these in order to TRY and get good quality audio and video.

Look, seminar shooting (which is essentially what you’re doing) is reasonably specialized work.

My simple advice is thus:

ALWAYS have a totally dependable tape based camera – digital or analog – shoot the master shot. (My fave was a DSR-series DVCAM camera since you had the option to use 180 min tapes. NOBODY can hold their bladder longer than that and speak without needing a break!!!)

Establish not one, not two, but THREE audio feeds to that camera. A direct wireless – a board feed – AND a backup mic placed at a ceiling speaker with a quality XLR cable run to the camera position that you can swap for either the primary or secondary if one of them fails. If you don’t have two quality feeds to the camera at ALL TIMES – consider yourself in BIG trouble.

NEVER promise “final tapes before the conference is done.” ALL your clients will want that. And you may very well be able to deliver that – particularly if you know EXACTLY what you’re doing and have the right equipment and crew needed to deliver. – but STILL don’t promise it. There are just WAY too many things that can delay a tape – and most of these things will be TOTALLY out of your control.

I could go on for pages – but it’s dinner time.

Good luck.

[Mark Suszko]

NEVER promise “final tapes before the conference is done.” ALL your clients will want that. And you may very well be able to deliver that – particularly if you know EXACTLY what you’re doing and have the right equipment and crew needed to deliver. – but STILL don’t promise it. There are just WAY too many things that can delay a tape – and most of these things will be TOTALLY out of your control.
.

Well, that’s just not good business, either, unless you’re getting paid in advance or on delivery. If they are grinding you on the expenses of making the thing in the first place, you don’t have to be Kreskin to foresee a large chance of them stalling payment if you give away your leverage and deliver final product before getting paid.

[James Richards]

Thank you Mark – some really great notes here. I’ve stepped away from my desk for dinner and some family time, so I’m working my way through the replies (I was happy to see so many), but at the moment I’m still planning on shooting the EX1 or EX3 – which could fall into the semi-pro gamut easily enough. I’ll check to see if they have the TC function you mentioned.

I also think there’s a nice note to your studio shoot idea. It’s probably a long shot, but there’s a fair argument that sorting through all the raw footage would take as much if not considerably more time than shooting a scripted lecture in a controled environment.

Thank you for your time today –

-James

[James Richards]

Bill –
I think that backup audio feed from the ceiling speaker is a great idea. It’s a nice heads up, too, hearing how applicable murphy’s law seems to be in the corporate video / seminar world. Thank you for sharing your experience w/ this thread –

[Steve Kownacki]

More things that came to mind on your job:

I see 2 full days of pre-production/scouting/gear list making. While some you could chalk up as education, it’ll take time to coordinate. Plus you’ll want to do a dry run in your office to finalize workflow.
This is easily a 4 hour setup even when you are familiar with what you need to do. (The first day tends to be 16-20 hours)
Can you leave the gear in the room each night or do you have to move it to a secure area or completely tear down? More setup each day. Your budget may not allow for an assistant there the whole time, but maybe get one at that start and end of each day.

Steve

[Alan Lloyd]

[Bill Davis] “the speaker who decides it’s more PERSONAL to walk out halfway into the audience where there’s NO LIGHT and hold a LONG conversation”

Or (personal experience here) you’re the handheld guy at the front of the room when the magician performing (???) decides to find the one spot on the stage where he’s lit from his neck to his knees only and stay there as though his shoes were nailed to the floor, and the director is howling in the comms to get the guy to move.

Short of getting up there and moving him physically, which I was not about to do, nothing would have worked.

[Mark Suszko]

Oh, ok, this is turning into a hotel venue horror story swap meet
🙂 Training session for new court judges, the panel is at a long table with mics set for both the house PA and feeding my cameras. One of the judges taps on the mics near him, hears that only one of them is coming thru the speakers, and decides my direct-to-camera mic is unnecessary, so he puts it under the table.

Not having an MC or assistant is a common problem source. You pass a wireless mic into the audience, and every person who handles it decides they have to fumble with the power or mute switches on it. Then they either stick it down their throats to talk, or they plant it in their crotch while they remain seated, so you can’t hear or see them. Better, the times when half the guys in the audience won’t wait for the mic to pass to them, they will just try to talk without it. There is only one position for switches on wireless stick mics: permanently welded into the “on” position, and taped over, and glued to a stand that itself is super-glued to the height adjustment. And nobody in the seats is allowed to talk until the mic-holding person comes over to them, or they walk up to the pre-lit mic stand. 🙂

[Richard Crowley]

“Training session for new court judges, the panel is at a long table with mics set for both the house PA and feeding my cameras. One of the judges taps on the mics near him, hears that only one of them is coming thru the speakers, and decides my direct-to-camera mic is unnecessary, so he puts it under the table.”

Perhaps because I’m old enough that I can get away with it (or I just don’t care what they think of me), I have yelled out from the camera position: “PLEASE DON’T MOVE THE MICROPHONES!” I don’t care if they are the king of the world, it isn’t THEIR job description to position the equipment.