Multi-Camera Evaluation

During our first multi-camera production we decided to do a paranormal multi-camera. We came to the idea by brainstorming ideas. We were talking about implementing ways to scare the audience while keeping in theme with the main show. We decided to go with the whole paranormal idea. We built up on the idea more and the initial idea of scaring the audience was pushed out the way to prioritize making an actual production.

Our second multi-camera production was based around the idea of improvisation. We decided to make up multiple sets to work around the idea of improvisation. We had scenarios laid out where actors would run of a basic script, and the improviser had to work around the scenario. This meant we had to prepare actors for the improvisers.

I came up with the intro idea for our paranormal multi-cam, I quickly drafted it up on the whiteboard, then worked on it using placeholders until I had images of the set, and cast. In the improvisation multi-camera, someone came up with the idea for the intro, but I couldn't picture how it was going to be. It wasn't until someone actually drew up a storyboard of the idea that I understood exactly what they wanted and worked on it at home.

Personally, by the time we started to get into the studio for the second production, I lost a lot of enthusiasm for the production, which meant I didn’t put my full effort into it. Within the last two days of both productions, VT’s had to be rushed which meant that it wasn’t at it’s best standard. I managed to get them done in just enough time.

I felt like everything was quite rushed when in the studio, as in a real case scenario, there is a dedicated crew to work on just set, and just technical. Although the crew has to setup and film in one day, they have weeks before in a warehouse to build sets and a large budget. Ideally, to compensate for that, I think the multi-cam groups should have been spread over 3 weeks, so each group get’s a week to set up, it would be a much more calm atmosphere.

I left the others to write up the script as I'm not good at script writing. Instead of working on the script, I would look into what equipment we had and work on the 'techy' side of things for our multi-camera.

I think the group suffered a bit from procrastination, as not much stuff got done until the last minute, but once we got going into it, we did most of the stuff in no time. The first multi-camera seemed a bit more prepared than the second, but we had a director change quite late, which did put us all out a bit. Being in a group had it’s plus sides too, as it meant while you could get on with one thing, other people could get on with other stuff. I wasn’t too great with making a set, so the people with more skill in that area could get on with that, while I could get on with more of the technical side of things.

With the group I was working with, they let me get on with more technical things, which was something I’d be able to work on the best.

Both of our shows had most stuff left last minute, which meant a lot of rushing around, but when we pulled together, we set up everything in no time. For both shows, it always seemed that there was one VT left to do, but because I could edit swiftly, we could get the edit done in time for the production. I did find that the device that played the VT’s let us down a lot as the format in which it plays from flash drives was not an appropriate one. It played DivX, which is not a greatly used format, so downloading a converter in the time between finding out and needing everything ready was not long enough as we never got told about this problem. I thought that to prepare me for next time, I’d try and find out if we would have a new system for the next multi-camera, I seem to remember getting told there would be a new machine, but it turned out it was the same device. In the end, I decided I would try and quickly download some DVD authoring software and burn it to a DVD because I removed the nasty DivX converter that had given me a load of frame rate issues, and stuck a DivX watermark on the videos.

Another problem we had was that on our second multi-camera, one of our improvisers dropped out on us on the morning of the actual recording, this was a major problem because he was in our VT and we would have no time to make another one up. In the end, our host, Neil took the place of the improviser, and Steve took the place of the host, but there was still the problem of Neil in the intro which there was no possible way to redo with someone else as it took around 10 hours just to edit.

In our second multi-camera, our plan was to have moving cameras to pick up each part of the set, and it was planned out which cameras picked up what shots. It came to the decision that the cameras would get spread out more so that they wouldn’t get audience member’s heads in shot, which I personally didn’t think would work. I think that if we had the audience all on flat seating, our original plan would have worked better, and the cameras would be able to move to pick up the sets. In the end, the outer cameras were spread too wide, causing the shots to have edges in of behind the set.