Friday, January 28, 2011

Producing Video from Across the County

Over the past 3 weeks I have been involved in a case that has required a large amount of video work. The goal of the video was to tell a story from the perspective of four victims that have been involved in similar accidents. The project took me to two cities in Massachusetts, up to Maine, and almost out to the west coast.

The style and setting of the three videos in Massachusetts and Maine were shot in a personal style, where the questioning attorney was in the room just having a conversation with the victim rather than hounding him with questions. The goal of these videos was to tell the story of the victims' lives and how they changed after the accident. We chose a narrative method where the questioning attorney would not be seen nor heard. Framing these subjects played a large role in the final video since we were putting together a compilation of all all four victims. We planned to shoot two victims framed left and the other two framed right. Many people don't necessarily pay attention to how subjects are framed in television, film, or news broadcasts, but the choices are very specific and intentional. I'll get into more details about framing in a later blog post, but the main point here is that I didn't want to have four subjects framed all on the same side in order to avoid monotony. I wanted left, right, left, right to keep the video visually diverse and appeal to the viewers the way they are used to seeing things professionally done on television and film.

The fourth video was out on the west coast, however, and with the fast approaching deadline obstructed by the not so promising New England weather dumping snow on us, it didn't seem like it was going to be in our favor to get out to Portland and back in a timely manner. Discussing this with our client, we came to the conclusion that hiring a local west coast video company while directing the work through a video conferencing session using Skype would be the easiest and most effective way to put our lawyer in the same room as the victim while retaining the same style as the previously shot videos. Our office manager narrowed the local video companies down based on their experience shooting legal video and passed the list on to me where I looked through my footage and production notes to guide me to make the right decision. After deciding, I gave one company a call to talk shop and discuss the logistics of how we were going to bring our lawyer from Massachusetts to Portland in a seamless and flawless way.

Production company, check! Videoconferencing, check! Sigh of relief on my end. Now I had to think about the setup of the cameras and figuring out how we on the east coast were going to see what the main camera on the west coast was seeing. When people think of Skype, they think of sitting in front of their computers with their shoddy built-in webcams that have poor frame rates resulting in a choppy visual conversation with someone. We decided that the traditional technique was not ideal for how we needed to communicate with the victim. Skype allows you to use an external camera if you decide not to use your built in camera or if you do not have a built in camera. I instructed the camera operator to use his main camera as the feed for the Skype camera, that way the camera we were viewing was the actual camera recording the subject, which gave us full communication and control if a framing issue occurred, or we needed to move the subject.

As far as the camera angles go, the first camera was a medium shot of our subject (head, shoulders, arms, and mid torso), and we also had a second camera that shot a close-up. Second camera angles are important for a few different reasons, such as using that second angle to cut to if an issue occurs with the first angle. A simple example is that the subject could be doing something distracting in the medium shot with his hands and we simply don't want the viewers seeing that, so we cut to a close up until he's done fidgeting. Additionally, deleted footage may cause awkward cuts that you don't want because it signals that something was clearly edited. By moving to a closeup briefly and then back to the medium shot you can somewhat solve that problem by creating smoother transitions that remain visually appealing. Lastly closeups are important when showing emotion. If someone begins to cry or is emotionally speaking about something, you want to see it in their eyes and bring your audience right into the pain and suffering of the victim. You never know when that second camera angle could either help you in the cutting room, or be the perfect shot you were looking for.

On the day of the shoot we performed a test to make sure our signals were smooth and I also spoke with the camera operator for a third time to review the game plan to make sure we were on the same page. We virtually brought our attorney 3,100 miles away into the same room as the victim and got unbelievable footage to complete the story of these four victims. The final step was to have the production company capture the footage on their end and send me the original tapes so I could capture them on mine. This was a smart thing to do because if anything happened to the tapes while in transit, the original footage was backed up. Luckily, we didn't need to rely on any safeguards because the tapes made it to us safely.

The videos came out great, and the final product was exactly what we wanted!

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