Workshop: Studio News/Green Screen

Our class was able to have a workshop on creating a live news piece as well as how to use green screen. For the first part of the workshop we were put into two groups, and had to create our own live news piece.

Crew

Interviewer - Charlie

Interviewee - Ruby

Kate - Director

Sei-Kai - Floor Manager

Sam B - Camera Operator

Tim - Camera Operator

Vic - Vision Mix

Me - Sound

Equipment Used

5 Lights

2 Clip Mic's

2 PMW cameras

Dolly

Screen to bounce light off

Sound

Image of the 'gallery' area, where the vision mixer, sound and directer stayed.

After being designated my job role on sound, I asked Kate what sound she wanted to use, i.e. clip mic's or boom. We ended up using the clip mic's due to Kate not wanting to pick up other noises.

When I collected the clip mic's I wasn't 100% sure whether we had to connect the mic's to the cameras or the mix machine. So I asked Fergus for some help.

He told me that it would be connected to the vision mix, and then went through the stages of how to check the mic's, to make sure they worked properly.

After testing out the headphones I waited until the lighting and camera's were roughly set up before putting the clip mic's on Charlie and Ruby.

He then told me that sound people normally would make notes of who was on what mic, as this would help if any problems occurred and then you would know what mic to sort out. I made a note of what clip mic would be going on who as well as who I could hear on each ear on the headphones.

The one main problem we had when creating the set for this interview, was the back drop. We originally wanted to use the white curtain, but when we looked on the cameras the white looked green. Kate then decided to use the black curtain instead, which resulted to being a better background. We used about 5 different lights, so that the background and people were lit and didn't look flat on the camera's.

Here is our finished video:



Unfortunately due to the vision mixer only recording half way through the interview, we didn't end up have the whole story. However the shots, the lighting and framing were very good and I think we worked well as a group on this project.

At first I was a bit nervous about doing sound, however once Fergus explained to me the process to go through and explained to me how to check the signal was working, etc, I felt much more comfortable with my job role.

Overall it was a really fun workshop and it gave us a tester on what it would be like when we do our live production show next year.

The second part of the workshop we got to learn how to use a green screen.

Unfortunately due to only having a short amount of time, Fergus was only able to show us how to change the background of the green screen on filmed footage.

Kate went on the green screen, Mike was in control of lighting and Sei- Kai was on camera. Kate was instructed to look around as if she was visiting a place. After we had filmed her Andre was able to add the background we chosen earlier to the green screen using After Effects.

Here is the video from the green screen:

Overall I didn't realise how hard it was to use green screen, you have to make sure you get lighting right as it can casts the persons shadow onto the screen and then that shadow would appear on whatever background you would add. Also on how long it takes to set a green screen up, Fergus set this green screen up and said it took him hours even with help.

I might use the green screen in the future for a project, maybe me, Tim, Sei-Kai and Illy could use it for our studio parts on our digital news project. However we would have to have lessons beforehand with Fergus as they can be quite tricky to get right.