Lessons in 'Quick turnaround' event coverage

Last March I took part in Bath Spa University's 'Social Media Experiment' coverage of X Media Lab Conference in Bath using Social Media.  X Media Lab Bath 2012 presented a great opportunity for Bath Spa University’s staff and students. A live, high-profile digital media event right on our doorstep. Event directors, Brendan Harkin and Megan Elliot, offered us a project that would enable students to use their media creation and publishing skills. I would support the students as Producer, helping them provide a variety of video coverage of the event.  We went on to produce 3 'quick turnaround' videos.  One shot during the VIP event launch at the Roman baths (Thursday).




One at the end of the main conference day (Friday).



One at the end of the mentoring weekend (Monday)



Later over the summer we produced a final 'overview' edit using all the material.



The footage was shot on Sony Z1 DV (tape) based cameras with some further material from Canon 7D.  It was a relatively slow and traditional process of ingesting, logging and capturing and editing.  The 'quick turnaround' wasn't bad but it wasn't actually very quick.

Today the Social Media Experiment was covering the ExPlay 12 event in Bath.  This time I decided to restrict the video team to iPhone.  How did we do?  How would it compare?

The quickest turnaround is 'one step' publishing.  We shot very short 'video bites'.  Then with no editing uploaded to YouTube and then Tweeted the link.  It worked but, perhaps having become used to having the ability to edit, I felt that the bites needed 'top 'n' tailing' - trimming, to tidy them up.  The uploading and tweeting workflow wasn't smooth.  Shot in Filmic Pro - uploaded to YouTube - tweeted.  All the detail and hashtags were entered twice without a keyboard.

'Two step' publishing was easier in someways.  Shoot on phone.  Transfer via USB lead and Image Capture.  Trim in QuickTime.  Upload to YouTube.  Tweet from YouTube.  Naturally we needed a laptop.  But the whole kit we used filled one shoulder bag.  YouTube does take a while - not long but worth noting.  Sadly when you tweet from YouTube the description doesn't automatically populate the tweet.  Which would have been neat and sweet!

The iPhone worked quite well - a 4s.  Problems with focus 'bubbling' and exposure meant that we used Filmic Pro which allows the frame rate to be set along with the focus point and the exposure.  We also had a small LED light (TecPro 'Fillini') which worked really well and made a huge difference to the quality of the image.  However the video quality wasn't high - not sure why we set it so low.  The interview eyelines were difficult to bring around enough.  Shooting video runs the batteries down quickly and we had to re charge at lunch time.  It's awkward to hold, so some sort of grip would have been a good idea.  Certainly a monopod would have helped.  Even without support, the videos were shake-free as a result of the image stabilisation in the app.  I had slight concerns that Interviewees wouldn't take us seriously with the iPhone - but this wasn't an problem.  None were surprised.  We used a shotgun mic (K6+ME66) with the phone - the built in mic would rarely have worked in the noise.  I made the lead by following this tutorial.

We started at about 11am and finished about 4pm.  All 15 of the video bites were up and tweeted by a leisurely 6pm.  As well as tweeting them individually they were playlisted in YouTube as and drawn into  Storify.



Lessons learnt?  Don't leave home with a decent mic and portable light.  Downloading the clips via USB and trimming in a laptop is the most sensible route to go.  Maybe it might work better with an iPad and editing in iMovie.  Tomorrow we'll give it a go.  I have my doubts about the ergonomics of shooting with the iPad and Filmic Pro is not full screen on the iPad.  But it will be interesting to compare with today's experience.

Sharing and collaborating materials web 2.1?

For team working Box.net proposes a useful feature.

As web 2.0 moves increasingly into socialising the web it's becoming easier to work on projects with friends, collagues and team mates remotely.  Dropbox is a very popular service, (well worth exploring if you haven't already) and it offers a shared folder.  This makes it possible to place a file into a shared web based folder, or if the app is installed on the collaborator's computer, onto their hard drive.  But there are some additional features that are needed to support comment and communication alongside file sharing.

Box.net

With a recent upgraded version of their service Box.net have some way to answer these issues.  Like Drop Box there is a free version as well as a premium service.  My comments all relate to the free service.  It comes with 5 gigs of storage.

I recently suggested using the service to a team of students who are managing the pre-production on a film project.  They have all had to set up accounts and provide an email address.  Any of the team can then place/view/download material from the shared folder.  Some files can be viewed in directly in the browser.  It supports common types of file formats like Word, Excel etc.  Each file can have notes and threaded comments attached to it.  People can easily be invited to join the 'sharing'.  It's also possible to do a group email to all collaborators.

When you log in to your Box.net account you are presented with a list of things that have been updated.  However it's not necessary to actually log in to Box.net see what's going on.  Each shared folder creates an RSS feed.  So all activity can easily be seen using a Feed Reader.  I use Google's reader and the excellent 'Reeder' (sic) on the iPhone. (£)

With web 2.0 there are a huge range of tool to help you work. I have been investigating some recently to help creative collaboration. Here are a few ideas:

Brainstorming -

1. Mind42 (mind maps)
2. Mindmeister (mind maps - incl iApp (£))
3. Xmind (downloadable app for mind maps)
   
4. Prezi This is a web app designed as an alternative to Powerpoints and the domination of bulleted lists. Might be good for outlining ideas, pitching stories etc.
   

Collaboration -
(real time)

1. Etherpad (Google has recently acquired this technology and the future of the free service is not clear).
2. Google Docs, either presentations or documents.
   
3. Facebook, for groups and communication
   
4. Celtx studio. I have a test account.
   
5. Acrobat.com has 'buzzword' for documents and presentations too. Slicker than Google Presentations. But only embeds pdfs like Google (so not documents).
6. iPaper embeddable documents!! Really aiming as a way of publishing. Works in VLE like Blackboard/Minerva.
   
7. Evernote Its possible to share research through their note sharing facility. iPhone app, Firefox add-on, downloadable application. Here is a shared notebook. I can add research so all can see. But others can only read it. It is an easy and very quick way of gathering and sharing material. But its one sided. Creating a generic account might be one way around this. But you could share a 'look book' or scrap book for filmmaking etc
   

Distribution (cross platform)

Dropbox (Docs and PDFs work well but text files don't on my iPhone) Optional download App that lives in the Mac Finder window. Really neat idea. You can share items from your dropbox. Last year this seemed very slow, but it seems to work better now.

box.net - free 1GB up to 25MB file size.

The future will be strongly influenced by Google Wave. Its buggy and in beta now. I've messed around with it alittle. One to watch next year.

regards, Mike J