The Blue Alliance

From the Mailbag:

Justin Rau of Team 68 writes:

Hey,

I love what you guys are doing! It is so professional; you’ve got a great thing going.

Just out of curiosity, I see your setup involves 2 mini-dv cameras and a sound board. At the kickoff, did you plug into AC power for your sound board, or did you have some portable source, or were the microphones plugged into the cameras? How did you synchronize the two cameras? And just for the heck of it, how many DV tapes did you go through?

Wow, I’m stunned by how good this looks! Keep it up!

Jacob Rau, FRC68

Thanks for the compliments about our show. We want to bring you the highest quality content we can, and it’s great to hear from you about how we’re doing.

For the first batch of episodes, we were able to use a two-camera shoot with a sound board. However, we didn’t have the convenience of all this when we went to Kickoff. Since we were shooting “in the field”, there were a lot of technical considerations we had to make about how to provide the most effective coverage. Most of what we shot was filmed with a single mini-dv camera, except for the interview with Paul Gudonis, where we set up two. Every shot used a tripod, except for some stock footage we took. During the kickoff, we were provided with an AV feed of the NASA telecast, and we recorded that straight to tape. So we had one tape for each camera that had about 40 minutes total footage between them, and two tapes that recorded the whole feed and were completely full.

We had to rely on what lighting was already there, since it would have been impossible to bring in our own. Luckily, everything was already well lit for the webcast, so we were able to take advantage of that. We tried to avoid filming under plain fluorescent lights when possible, since that makes the shot feel colored funny. The human eye is much more versatile than a camera lens, so even when it ‘feels’ bright enough, the camera always wants more light.

Audio was the trickiest part of the shoot. Since we were in a very crowded area, picking up only ourselves and not the ambient noise was a challenge. We used two handheld XLR microphones similar to those a small band might use. Our camera only had a single 1/8″ input, so we ran the XLR mics into two XLR to 1/4″ adapters, then into two 1/4″ to 1/8″ adapters, and finally into a 1/8″ channel splitter. This way, one mic recorded to the left channel and the other to the right. We mixed them back together and balanced the audio in editing. This way, if our guests held the microphone closer to their mouths than our hosts, we could fix the audio afterwards. The most important piece of the audio setup was a good pair of noise-canceling headphones for the camera operators. Plugged into the camera’s headphone port, they heard what the camera heard and could tell us how to adjust the audio for best clarity.

We’re planning out the next few episodes of The Blue Alliance, and we should have some great content for you guys right before regionals start. We’re going to show you some tips and tricks to scout and drive more effectively. Stay tuned and keep writing!