Lockdown

Like everyone, we're watching a LOT of TV these days. And cooking. And thinking about how cooking shows are made. One show we've been binge watching and learning from is Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course. One production trick they're using is they introduce the ingredients for a dish using stop motion. Cool idea. 

We thought we'd give it a try with smithing tools and the materials needed for a piece of jewelry. The stills were shot at 4k resolution on the Canon 5D Mark III.

Back in May I started watching "Office Hours." It's a group of media professionals (ok, geeks) that meet on Zoom two hours every day to help people with the new realities of our locked down world. One topic of focus for the group has been education as it relates to the complexities and frustrations teachers are facing during lockdown.

My day job is the Director of Art and Media Production at the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland. Summer is usually full of language conferences but obviously that's not happening this year. Our leadership decided to host a virtual conference that brings together all of the cancelled language conferences for three days. NFLC would not only handle all the organizing of speakers, but I would handle creating the live stream event. 

One of the highlights of the Las Vegas NAB show for me has been Post Production World. I mean seeing new gear is fun, but PPW is a great opportunity to learn from people who are at the top of the industry. When NAB was cancelled, PPW pivoted to go online. My team at UMD and I all signed up and are ready to learn.

The silversmithing studio set looked great, but I need to improve the tech for the next video. 

All of the tripods and light stands are a hazard. I really need a grid to mount the lights and cameras, but with Blair's business shutdown funds are tight. I found a metal curtain rod in the storage room that had never been installed, so that will have to do for now. Thankfully, LED fixtures are so light the curtain rod can handle it. I also mounted the GoPro overhead to get an angle on the bench I couldn't get before.

One of the speakers at PPW was Alex Lindsay. He was interviewed on the topic of live streaming and virtual events. It was interesting, but one little tidbit at the end stuck out to me. 

Well, eight days later here's our first edition of Tidbits and Tooltips. A lot of post, some additional b-roll after the scripted content, sound cleanup... all the things. The music bed is original, created in Digital Performer. To prep for future videos I created a bunch of variations on the main theme that can be looped and strung together. 

There are a lot of things I will want to do to the set going forward, but with limited gear and still having a day job, I'm pretty happy with the results.

Well, it looks like we're going to be here for a while with this Covid thing.