Shooting a conference room presentation: Overcoming HVAC room noise and light from presenter’s projector

[Roderick Lavallee]

I think for the second recording series I may even bring in some low temp (physical temp, not light temp) LED spots to hit the speakers from the podium (a trick I noticed that CNBC uses on one of their round-table sit-down segments.)

Bottom line: communication with the client is paramount (isn’t it always), and maybe I need to try to be less of a magician with the client and more of an educator. When they know what’s necessary (from a high level at least) I’ll get more access to what I need to make it look and sound the best.

Thanks to everyone on the thread!

[Jim Brown]

I don’t know if you are doing any post production or not, but here is my “secret” for shooting this type of event. First try every way possible to use wireless lav. If you cannot then you must adjust in post. I use Final Cut Pro so I will describe how we do it.

Make certain to capture about 10 seconds of room noise. (No one speaking) Use it as a mask in Soundtract Pro to cancel that noise. If your air conditioning kicks on and off you will neeed a sample with the air off and one with the air on. That will help a lot,but never as good as not getting the noise on there in the first place.

Secondly on your lighting take a look at Presto from https://www.singularsoftware.com. You use two cameras. One to follow the speaker and another focused on the screen. (the screen camera can be a consumer type. does not have to be high quality). You then export the Power Point presentation to .jpg files. In Final Cut pro you lay the presenter on Track 1, the screen camera on track 2 and export it to Presto. You specify the location of the .jpg files. The software will then create a speaker mask with key frame locations, replace the shot powerpoint screen with high resolution jpgs that have a perspective angle on them and create a new sequence in your FCP project that is just awesome. Look at the examples on the web page. It is just as good as the examples.

Hope this helps

Jim Brown
M&M ProductionsUSA

[Roderick Lavallee]

Thanks, Jim,

I take care of a LOT in post: particularly with this client. Been exporting PPT files into JPGs forever. I used Premiere Pro CS5, and am able to do what you described without having to use any plug-ins or other tools. (There are lighting effects that I can use within PPro, but as anyone knows the final cut always looks better the less you have to do in post, unless you have a $150k editing deck and tons of CGI skills, and that’s not me.)

Great call on the sample the room noise, however. I’ll use that trick in order to sample the baseline Noise Floor for when I edit the audio in post (I use Adobe Audition CS5.5 for that, which integrates seamlessly with PPro.)

[Bill Davis]

Regarding specifically “overcoming light from the presenters projector” …

There are typically two sources of that.

The easy one to control is any spill coming from the projector housing itself, if any. Build yourself a simple foamcore “box” to position around the projector. Takes 5 minutes with a sharp blade and a roll or gaffers tape in addition to the foam core.

As to screen light, it’s a tougher issue. Obviously the audience can’t see the projection if it’s not emitting light back to the audience.

So one solution is to use a podium or lectern to “force” the presenter into a fixes position and light them there. Some will comply, some have a personal style preference or even a pathological need to “wander” while presenting – including standing IN the light of the projection at various times.

When faced with that, just do the best you can. Having rapid and easy control of your camera iris helps a bit.

Good luck.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Roderick Lavallee]

Great call on the box. Always have a blade and gaff-tape on hand as it is, and in thinking about it, that is what surprised me about this projector: how much bleed there was from it.

And what was most odd about the effect it created was the rolling RGB bar effect in the entire frame of the shot if I got too close to the screen, even when I closed the iris to compensate (which as you know is problematic for the quality of the rest of the shot).

Oh the headaches you create for yourself when you tell the client you will be as unobtrusive as possible. The threshold of “possible” is about to change. 🙂