OT: Advice for picture change in productions.

UlfLaursen wrote on 1/4/2009, 8:19 AM
Hi

I need advice from some of you pro. folks here for general making productions.

I make a weekly ½ hour production for local TV now with a guy preaching from a pulprit.
I have 1 camera on him steady the whole time. I have a library of different cut-ways like audience, candles, pictures, powerpoint related to the speach etc. to 'cut to' so to say.

I would of course like to make the program as worth seeing as possible to try to make people stay as long as possible on the channel.

My question therefor is: is there som kind of recommendation on how long time a clip can be before you cut to something new?
The guy on the pulprit is 'pretty much alive' so to say, but it is of course very boring to watch his face for ½ hour.

Does any of you, that does or have done TV, have any experience with this?

Thanks.

/Ulf

Comments

Grazie wrote on 1/4/2009, 9:33 AM
I haven't done EXACTLY this nor for TV, however . . .

You have 30mins = 30 x 1 mins = 30 x 10 x 6secs I guess if you make multiples of 6 seconds that's about right? So 6, 12, 18, 24 . . . sections to mix it up using your following ideas:

* Have stills of WHAT he is talking about

* News events?

* B-roll of Church?

* B-roll of congregation

* B-roll of him meeting and greeting congregation . . .

* Large text of what he is quoting. Do some great stuff with text!!

Also bring in external real world footage too. Don't be scared.

BUT you will have to do WORK! And the work is listening yourself to What he is sayi8ng and making notes or hitting the M key. USE Johnny Rofrano's VASST Notepad! Pure GENIUS!!

Time cutaways to perfection and even halt and wait for the "look" from somebody to punctuate the flow. This IS about editing. This IS the hard work.

Set up a 6-Second Marker grid and test your ideas. Sure, 6 gives like 1800 (?) segments - I AM not thinking that that is what you do! LOL! So some could be 36 seconds and so on . . . Hey the 6-second is about optimum listening concentration? It is for most people watching TV adverts. Watch a 30 second advert! Also, DO watch how the TV channels cover this type of work.

The other side of this is that, truthfully WATCHING a pastor or rabbi or who ever IS about concentrating on the long haul;. It SHOULD be about contemplation. The trouble is that you COULD make the images MORE interesting and intrusive than the "message" being communicated. Yeah?

Another thing would be to have the pastor in a neat half of the screen and merged to the other with images that "meant" something. Again, the "medium" could get in the way of the "message".

I haven't been much help, have I?

Grazie
Coursedesign wrote on 1/4/2009, 10:46 AM
Grazie's suggestions are great!

I've seen a lot of this kind of stuff shot without B-roll, not too exciting (but fixable with great effort).

When I edit stuff like this, I start playback and use the M key to mark each place the speaker has a burst of energy in the delivery.

After that I have a timeline with space between the markers for cutaways.

If you have a really poor speaker without any energy bursts at all, you can create an illusion of this by selectively increasing the audio level where the speaker is making a point.

There are many ways to create interest artificially when you have boring speakers, if that's your problem I'll be happy to share more techniques for this.

UlfLaursen wrote on 1/4/2009, 11:01 AM
Thanks a lot guys - this gives me a LOT to work with. :-)

/Ulf
JackW wrote on 1/4/2009, 12:35 PM
You might consider going at this in a different manner. What this video is about is a pastor who has a message to deliver to his viewers.

Some of the things he says are of GREAT IMPORTANCE; other things can be thought of as connective -- that is, connecting Important Idea #1 to Important Idea #2, etc.

The important points call for a close up -- pastor and viewer face-to-face -- while the connective material, which is less intense, can get by with a medium or cover shot. We see this shot construct repeatedly in film and television.

Cut away shots remove the viewer entirely from the message the pastor is trying to present unless they are specifically related to the content of the message. Flowers, statues, stained glass windows, the congregation, etc., don't fall into this category; they're little more than a crutch to relieve visual boredom. The challenge is to make the pastor and his talk more dynamic, rather than to tart up the half-hour with extraneous visuals.

So I'd think more about how to vary the shots of the pastor as they relate to the content of his talk than about how long to devote to each shot or about adding non-specific b-roll.

Jack
Coursedesign wrote on 1/4/2009, 9:10 PM
The purpose of B-roll is not to remove the viewer from the message, that would technically make it A-roll.

1. For B-roll, reaction shots are a mainstay of film and TV for a reason. They connect the viewer with the message rather than take away from it.

2. Reaction shots can be re-used several times without anyone noticing, especially with a little bit of finessing (see 3. below).

3. If your video isn't too foggy, you can also "zoom in" on the subject [using Vegas] occasionally to create variety. It doesn't have to be just the face either, I've used hands many times.

4. You can even create the illusion of a "changed perspective" in Vegas to get more variety, without removing anything from the message.

5. Whatever you do, don't cut by the clock. That produces video that feels like the music produced by Band-In-A-Box. Very mechanical and strangely lifeless. Go with the natural rhythm instead, think playing by ear instead of first-time sight reading!

The above techniques are easy to implement with a little bit of practice and lack of fear.

Next step would be to learn what can be done with the audio tracks, but from what I've found this is more difficult for most video editors.

One intermediate technique: add audience sounds that you have picked up from the actual audience (building your own library), or sounds from a commercial sound library. The sounds should be picked based on how they pull the viewer into the message, rather than distracting the viewers.

Naturally, all techniques can be used or abused, and good taste takes some practice to develop.

UlfLaursen wrote on 1/4/2009, 9:13 PM
Thanks again Jack and Bjorn.

/Ulf
farss wrote on 1/4/2009, 10:04 PM
Seems to me that over time you're really setting yourself up for a lot of work. I'm assuming you're doing this show every week and you're not getting any financial reward for it. I'd also assume it has to be delivered in a timely manner.
For the people who do watch it after a while you either have to keep acquiring new B roll footage or they soon tire of seeing the same thing which is really daft because the A roll footage will be fresh and not the B roll. In the end your efforts could have the reverse effect.
If I had to do this kind of show every week and wanted to spruce it up I'd at least have another camera, not like cameras are that expensive and when you compare the price to the time you're investing even cheaper. With another camera your life just gets so much easier.
Now add a cheap vision switcher and by the end of the show, job done.

Bob.
Grazie wrote on 1/4/2009, 10:06 PM
. . and would people STILL be bored?

Grazie
farss wrote on 1/4/2009, 10:27 PM
That's a good point and one I was going to mention.
My grandparents I recall listening to church services on the old mantle radio. I think this kind of content people either watch / listen to or they don't.
I used to have to watch a lot of Benny Hine. It was entertaining but no way even after 100s of hours of it did it sway me. There's one "church' down here that has a bigger budget than most TV stations and they spend a fortune. They get a lot of people in but I suspect a lot go for the free show.On the other hand Arthur Stace and a piece of chalk probably made more people think about the next life than anything ever will. Sydney doesn't seem the same without his copperplate script on the footpaths.

Bob.
Grazie wrote on 1/4/2009, 10:33 PM
So why is Ulf bothering?
FilmingPhotoGuy wrote on 1/4/2009, 10:49 PM
Some good ideas there Grazie, Thanks.

If you have only one camera as you have (not you Grazie), then you need to get a digital audio recorder which get strapped to the speaker. Then you can cut away and film as you wish. The audio is the media that will bind the whole thing together later.
Rory Cooper wrote on 1/4/2009, 11:07 PM
Any lengthy talk can be a challenge irrespective of the theme or setting

So try to engage the audience by highlighting the main points or scriptures using straplines or tickertape,lower thirds etc
farss wrote on 1/4/2009, 11:09 PM
So why is Ulf bothering? "

Because we all have a natural urge to want to make things "better".
I used to do this with audio, futzing around for ages with every plugin I could lay my hands on. Then after a while I realised I was making it worse than the original recording. Not to say that I don't still use a little Eq and a little compression but all the other stuff, no.

Bob.
Grazie wrote on 1/4/2009, 11:15 PM
"The audio is the media that will bind the whole thing together later." Yup! Got that right L-A!

Grazie
ushere wrote on 1/5/2009, 12:24 AM
from my experience people will watch 5th generation vhs IF the content is what interests them.

on the other hand, i have posted exceptionally big budget corporate 'talkfests' where three cameras were used, along with 'free' access to large, well stocked file footage libraries, and the whole schmozzel topped off with composed music and sweetening. and on watching the final playback i found most of us in the edit suite nodding off in absolute boredom - that included; the director, two company reps, not to mention the shows 'host'.

if you're doing it out of love, go for it - it'll show through, but don't expect anything you do to attract anyone not interested in the subject.

heck, some of my own stuff bores me ;-)

leslie