kris Garden

A blog of my Jounry so far

[kris-garden]

Glow Festival portrait gallery

08/05/2018

Brief: The opening event of this years glow festival took part in Edinburgh’s portrait gallery its consisted of speeches from the principle and other guess speakers as well as multi dance routines from EC students. We where tasked with filming the dancing and projected them onto a 50″ monitor. 

The set up: The set up consisted of live streamer with 2 Jvc 850 one connected directly to the live streamer via BNC and JVC via teradek so it was remotely broadcaster. The director then vision mixed and transmitted the picture to the external monitor. 

My role within the production was to help set up and to operate camera 2 the remote camera. 

Conclusion: With no prior visit to see the rehearsals of the dancing we where unaware of position until the performance had started so in future event or a similar set up it would be imperative to witness a performance before we start to film to give us more of and indication of movement and position, also as there was a lack of talkback i was unable to know when my camera was live this proved difficult for me physically as i had the camera shoulder mounted and was unaware of how long i was to keep each shot for. 

[kris-garden]

SMRC Knockhill round 2

06/05/2018 

Brief to film and produce highlights of the each of the 14 races for the SMRC media content. 

we arrived at 8am on the morning of the race giving us a 3 hour set up time. each camera position was maned by the same team as last racing meeting making the set up run smother as everyone new there roles and positions. My camera position was was camera2/5 as this was a reverse directions week at knockhill. i had the JVC with manual lens and the set up i used was ND 1/4 manual aperture 5.6-8 and full focal length. the shutter speed original set at 500 but i chose to go down to 250/1 the temp used was 500k. This provided a superb true color. 

conclusion: As this was the second racing meeting we has a production team had a meeting the previous week to discus problems with communication and break times as well as technical issues with other camera teams. This meant that problems i faces such as batter life and breaks we satisfied anther last minute decision made was to swap camera 4 jvc for a Panasonic giving the jvc uses extra battery each. this proved a great solution as i was needing an extra battery by the end of the day. without this extra battery. 

[kris-garden]

Edinburgh college Orchestra

20/03/2018 

The Edinburgh college orchestra requested recording of the event taking place at wentworth hall the following evening with limited time myself and Umair decided a two camera shoot would be suitable and possible given our lack of equipment chooses and recce time. we decided upon 2 Panasonic xf1000s gun mic with xlr for a better sound capture. 

This set up worked well as the smaller camera and lighter tripod gave us more mobility with regard to moving around the venue as this had to be done several times during the evening as there was no prior time for a recce audience numbers were unknown. 

Conclusion: The Panasonic cameras were good and light however the low light of the venue meant that the gain had to be set at the highest level 24db giving the footage a grainy quality. 

[kris-garden]

SMRC Knockhill round 1

8/4/2018

brief Edinburgh college Ob production team was tasked with providing coverage of the SMRC championships for 7 rounds of the compatistions and providing highlights packages for YouTube and possibly Motorsport TV

The shoot consisted of 6 cameras each covering a section of the track. with camera 6th  roaming camera within the pit area. 

equipment 4 jvc 4 tripod 2 cannon fx100 with 1 tripod 3 batters per camera f8 field mixer macbook and Imac for ingest

My position (as pre-arranged was camera 2 covering corners 1-5 

I was tasked with capturing footage of the cars for the longest time possible within the 2nd 3rd 4th corners. using the jvc 850 with fujifilm manual lens i was able to capture the desired footage extremely well with no problems however a batter issue arose and my camera cut out prematurely during a race with no battery backup. this was resolved with the aid of a runner. 

camera settings:temp 5000k 1/4 ND shutter 500/1 back focus full. f stop 5.6 - f.8 

slight alterations where ND filter only. 

problems communication between everyone was rather confusing as there was no structure to radio commands this became rather problematic when deciding when to start recording. another problem that i faced was not having a battery ready to change to when my first batter had ran out due the the monitor decreasing my batter life this lead to a moment of frustration, which i handled poorly with my colleague. 

[kris-garden]

Melrose Uni 7s

university 7s tournament Melrose RFC 1st April

The shoot a multi-camera shoot that consisted of 3 cameras feeding the live stream within the press box, this included a replay system feeding the live stream via a macbook. all games would be filmed but not steamed live. 

i was tasked with operating the tight angel camera as well as taking control of the replay system at certain points 

cons Melrose is a very old and historic ground so there was no specific  locations for camera positions. using the seating benches we maneuvered the tripod spreeders in between gaps in the seating as well as using bricks to weigh the tripods down. for extra stability. our next problem was feeding the SDI cables up to the press box above us. we did this by using the roof pilers to out advantage buy rapping the cables around them keeping out of the public way and taping down excess cabling. 

conclusions As the melrose ground is very old its difficult to position our cameras in a suitable position i would like to see small staging supplied so we may set up away from the stand giving us more flexibility with cam positions. anther conclusion would be the introduction of a longer cable that would give us the ability to film from the opposite side of the pitch.  

[kris-garden]

Glow Festival

Recce

The Edinburgh college glow festival 2018 will be held at the Edinburgh portrait gallery. 

The requirements of the shoot would be to film dancers and performers on the top tear of the room and be transmitted via wireless to a TV floor level. 

it was decided at the recce the teradek transmitting pictures to the live stream that would be located in corner of the gallery which would then feed the big screen TV. 

problems we may face are that the walls and columns of the grand old building are solid stone making them impossible to penetrate with any radio signal so it was suggests by myself that a relay teradek would be the only way to clearly beam the pictures downstairs via line of sight. 

A equipment test day as been set date TBC 

[kris-garden]

Knockhill production meeting

After the recce we decided as a class (PDA) to discuss the first Knockhill meet on the 8th of April. these included 

crew numbers

crew training where required

equipment list

travel arrangements for equipment and crew

[kris-garden]

knockhill reccie

The team decided that it would be beneficial to do a full track recce, this was to look at key points such as camera position and accessibility to them, health and safety rules with the track as well as an introduction to head stewards. 

key things we took back from the recce were number of cameras needed and in what positions 

the health and safety element required being track-side, this was discussed with knock-hill safety staff 

anther key element we discovered was the ever changing weather at the track and how to look after the camera equipment in case of rain fall. 

after recce the group decided to book a date to discuss our findings back at college. date TBC

[kris-garden]

Edinburgh College Creative Bash 2017

The colleges creative courses showcase event “creative bash” was a night held at the Thomas Morton Hall on the 30th of November, durring the night we had DJ, lives bands, dancers and music theatre. We PDA and AVT where tasked with 2 tasks 1 ENG of the event 2 live stream to a project the on stage performances. 

The AVT2 students concentrated on collecting eng footage of the event while we pda consisting of myself jim and umair were responsible for streaming the projections. with the aid of the avt2 students.

The Shoot: we where giving a call time of 4:30 at the venue, this was ample time to set up 2 hours before event was due to officially start this allowed time for rigging and testing with added time of problem solving. the set up consisted of 2 JVC one on sticks and one roaming the live streamer a projector and a sound feed from the desk. although i was aware there was a problem with the sound (unknown why) so sound was taking directly from the camera. 

my camera/roaming. i was given the task of setting up the teradek, something i have done before but only of limited experience. so setting up transmitter and receiver was a good experience although had to rely on technical ingenuity rather than following a how to guide. 

using the roaming camera i was tasked with getting shots of close ups of the band and other performances, which would be switched with safety cam and streamed to the wall via streamer to projector. this worked well bar some slight problems 

1. The terdek had a lose connection and would drop out at times, unable to use talk back i had to rely on hand signals and people coming over and informing me. 

2 the single from the teradek seems slightly out of sync i.e there was a delay from the singers to the output on the wall. 

3 no coms meant i was unsure of the best shot to take so had to rely on instinctive and experience. 

conclusions: research using and setting up a teradek as to avoid delays. over all this project was a success from my point of view. 

[kris-garden]

Marion McNeil talk OB

Music box 06/10/2017

Marion McNeil is a BBC producer whom came to give a talk/chat to the college students. The talk took place in the music box auditorium.

The brief-We were tasked to produce a good quality recording of the talk/chat as the last recording by HN students had framing and sound issues, as a group we decided that the best way to precede would be to set up an OB ourselves.

The Shoot- There was little time for perpetration and most of the crew where unfamiliar with the venue, so this was a somewhat ambitions task, however we all thought that this was the best way to get a good result.

The day of the shoot started at 1-1:15 where we collected all the OB stuff from stores and proceeded to the venue we had no longer than 1 hour in order to set up and test everything, lucky nothing went wrong as we had to time for replace or fix component in the chain.

We had a 3 camera set up cam 1 tight on guest cam 3 wide on host and guest and cam 2 MS on host and guest with camera 1 doubling as audience during Q and A.

My roles as switcher/director was to pick the shots for transmission/recoding problems I faced during this role was an unfamilitity of the live streamer and so some technical assistant by ally was helpful however I grew in confidence as the show progressed and soon got the hang of the equipment.

Conclusion- Overall I feel the shoot when ok minus some changes to how we do Q and A in future events. The biggest advantage we had this time was that we had no influence from out tutor and so we had to learn first had how to set up and conduct and OB by ourselves, this was a great learning opportunity. The other interesting thing we as a team learned was the use of allocating positions such as audio and camera supervisors” although these positions were not allocated as such more that Pawel and Tom took it upon themselves to fill these roles. This made the whole experience much more enjoyable and easier to manage. And I hope as a group we move in this direction of appointing roles.

I also feel more self-reliant OB experience would be a huge advantage for future project and will be requesting that we are given more training experience before fulfilling client based projects.  

[kris-garden]

Varsity match-Edinburgh st Andrews University 

Edinburgh and st Andrews university tasked the EC-OB team with providing a live multi-camera stream of the matches, this included a live feed to the stadium big screens.

reccie-We did a stadium recce on the Tue the 19th of Sept which included finalising equipment list and camera position, during this recce we realised some key parts of equipment where missing such as a black magic converter which he where able to borrow.

The shoot 23rd Sept- BT Murrayfield, We arrived for set up at 2pm this gave us 4 hours to set up “this was good about of time”. there was no issues with setting up of the cameras but i did find that while during the match I (cam 2) had focus issues, this was due to unfamiliarity of the back focus lens. The use of powered cables to the cameras took the demand for battery life out of the equation although battery's where required to power the monitors,there life was extended as the monitors  used little power.

cabling- the cabling of the 100ft SDI was problematic in that it was not a flexible cable and damaging cable twisting was occurring, myself with help from Paweł piotrowski found the solution was to unwind the cable as a whole before placing into position, and taping it down, the taping down of the cable was ok until member of the public arrived, this caused the cable to be moved,kicked,stood upon, luckily there was no damage to the cable, but cable protects may be advised for future projects

De-rigg-The de-rigg went well everyone worked as a team and we backed up quickly and did not leave anything behind,

Conclusions- overall i feel the shoot went OK, changes i would make would be a more obvious chain of command as i feel a more delegation of jobs would help not only take pressure away from our director whom had several jobs including audio, vision mixing,graphics and directing. Giving our team tasks such as audio,graphics ,camera supervisor and outsourcing jobs to the HND students i feel would have made the job a little smother.