Production 3: News/Documentary

News Pitch: Local news; At this time of year in Vermont, the fall leaves are changing colors... this natural phenomenon brings a human phenomenon... the 'leaf peeper' tourists coming from around the area to see our state's beautiful landscape... 

Ian, Josh, and I created a news story about Mr. Morrison and his video game design class learning about and developing for virtual reality (VR) technology.

In the beginning, we had many ideas and were unsure what to do - my 'leaf story' pitch was one of the options, as was visiting the Second Chance Animal Center; we actually settled on the former because of Second Chance's distance but had trouble securing interviews with the people we wanted - Town Manager John O'Keefe and two Manchester shop owners. So, at our teacher's suggestion (thanks) we changed focus to what the two students outside BBA Cinematography's door were doing with their virtual reality headset. These students were Quinn Murnaghan and Sam Barrows, and Ian and I were able to interview them that day, as well as capture B-roll of the headset, the computers, and Sam playing VR games. 

The interviews went very well; it helped that Ian knew Quinn and I knew Sam, so we were able to talk to them easily. We used a JVC HM100 video camera mounted on a fully extended tripod, with the camera's high quality lav mics, to record all of our footage. Quinn was our first subject. We had him sit on the wood table in the hallway and positioned the camera between him and the Computer Room, towards the News Room, with him on the left third so we could get Sam dancing around in the background. A light behind the camera lit him up. Ian was the interviewer, and asked Quinn some basic questions - who are you, what class are you taking, what games are you making, what has your experience been like?

After the first interview, I handed off the SD card to Josh to load into FCPX. Josh would spend the next week of class slaving away, editing our story. Unfortunately, it was only realized later that something somewhere (probably the XLR cable or a camera setting) was off and only the left stereo channel of audio was recorded; this was corrected, after a process, by switching 'stereo' to 'dual mono' in FCPX audio editing. Ian and I moved on to talking to Sam, but since Quinn had answered our questions well already, essentially all we asked Sam was 'what is your name?' and 'what are you doing?'. We actually recorded him while he had the headset on and was playing the game, which I think worked out great for interest. After that, we stepped back and recorded a panning shot of Sam playing VR and some close ups of the gear. We wanted to have ample B-roll to work with.

The next day I interviewed Mr. Morrison, tech and VR teacher at BBA. Like with Quinn's interview, we positioned him, standing up this time instead of sitting on the table, on the left third to show a student playing VR in the background. Although I didn't ask him any more questions than we asked Quinn, he was obviously an experienced interviewee and spoke extensively about what he does, what his VR game design class is doing, and why VR is important to society. He spoke so well and covered so much that even though the interview had to be cut down significantly, it still made up the bulk of the package. However, caught up in listening to what he was saying, I didn't catch that he unfortunately didn't repeat the questions I asked him. Later, in editing, this proved to be an issue because we couldn't use his own words to provide order to our story. Despite that, we and especially our editor decided that we actually didn't need to take the time to do a stand-up because Mr. Morrison had already said everything for us. After the interview, we went into Mr. Morrison's classroom to film his other students working on their projects for more B-roll. Principal photography was now done!

Editing consisted of cutting down and reordering the interview clips, adding B-roll, and adding credits (with the Rick and Morty theme song, which fit perfectly!). With 100% noise reduction, the audio, especially Mr. Morrison speaking, is perfect: it is so clean. I was not the editor, so I cannot go into every specific detail of what was done during the editing process, but despite the aforementioned audio and repeating-the-question difficulties, I think Josh did a good job at this: interesting B-roll is used accurately to cover cuts and the video has good pace, not too fast and not boring. Our only gripe is that during the credits sequence, which starts and ends great, we couldn't figure out how to integrate more text into the effect and had to settle with the best we could get with the time and knowledge we had; it looks unprofessional.

I enjoyed working on this project and seeing the final result. Camera, lighting, and interviewing work, which was Ian's and my job, was all the application of knowledge learned in past units, nothing new except our subjects, and the practice was helpful. The most useful part of this unit to me was, in terms of furthering my knowledge of cinematography, learning the jargon and the process of making real news, something that I've never had any exposure to before. Overall, the process of making this news story went well, if not amazing, as was the result. If I were to redo this story now with the experience I've gained, to make it better, I would make sure to have Mr. Morrison repeat my questions: doing this would add order to the story. I would also interview Quinn and Sam with better questions, specifically around what they're doing in the class with their computers and their headset: their questions conflicted with Mr. Morrison's, and since he spoke better than they did on these questions, they had only a minor role in the final story, besides their B-roll. Better planning would have alleviated this issue. Minor issues included the positions of background VR-players during the interviews (it would have looked better if they were closer to the right third, but Sam was too close to the interviewee and Quinn was too far away), the bad cut at 1:29, and the text of names in the credits.

• "Cut a package" - the "package" is the whole news story, the finished product, cutting the package is putting everything together
• A-Roll - main footage in a film, i.e. the person speaking during an interview
• Anchor - the person who presents the story, works for the news company
• B-Roll- footage (images or video) that are placed over the main footage ("A-Roll") in a film, especially a documentary, especially an interview; create variety and can cover cuts in A-Roll
• Cold Open - a live opening
• Copy - the short script of what is said before the news story is presented
• Copyright - the specified rights for other people to redistribute your work, by holding the copyright you hold the ability to determine who can copy your work
• Credits  - the flowing list of everyone who contributed to the film with how they contributed, to make them happy, almost always at the end of a film
• Human Interest - personal and emotional type of (news) story
• Lavalier Mic (Lav Mic) - small, easily disguisable microphone commonly used during interviews, can go under and clip to a person's shirt to hide the cord
• Lower Third (title card) - lower third in the rule of thirds, ideal position for a title (name, position)
• NAT Sound - natural background sounds
• Package - the final product, completed news story
• POV or Point-of-View Shot - shot from the perspective of a featured person, looking through their eyes rather than at their eyes
• PSA - public service announcement, to gain public awareness for X
• Sign Off, Sig, Sig Out - saying your name and date at the end of a report
• Stand-up - news reporter standing or walking in front of the camera and saying their lines
• Tease - a short clip that captures the audience's attention on the topic without giving away the plot of the story
• Two-Shot - a shot with two people together, usually both talking in turn
• Videographer - the person filming the news story
• Voice-over - verbal scripted naration over some B-roll, usually recorded after principle cinematography has finished but more weight is needed in the story
• XLR Cable - popularly, the large cable that connects the microphone to the camera, used for professional audio products, connectors can have 3 to 7 pins