The Seattle Storm called me in to the office earlier this week, to shoot a video message from Ashley Robinson. When I get there, it turns out they also want to shoot an in-studio type interview, so I've got about 1/2 hour to build a set, using stuff I could find around the office... and I think it turned out pretty well if I do say so myself.
I used a room divider as the backdrop, with two desk lamps behind it to give it some depth. I had my flip mino hd (with tripod) in my backpack so I used that as a second camera (circled in the pic below)... I've found that the flip works OK as a second camera for these kind of interviews, as long as you can figure out how to get it in close enough to get a tight shot with it. I guess it might actually make more sense to use the flip for the wide shot, since it doesn't zoom, but I don't have enough faith in the flip for that just yet. I'd rather know for certain that the wide shot is going to look good, since the tight shot isn't really necessary.
I had two more desk lamps to light both the subjects and that was it. The colors from the flip never quite match up perfectly to my Panasonic DVX footage, no matter how much color correction I do, but it looks pretty good, and the benefit of having the second camera angle makes it well worth it for editing purposes. It's worth noting that this interview was produced exclusively for the web, I've never tried, and probably wouldn't try using the flip for something meant for TV.
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Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I've been busy with Storm playoffs. Here's a couple of the videos that I've been working on.
Random note about this first one... this is the first time I've found youtubes 'annotations' to be useful, I always just thought they were annoying and have never really had a use for them until this. (they pop up at :47)
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All 6 parts of my Seattle Storm History Documentary are now up on the Storms website, and on youtube. I'm including the last 2 parts here since they both address the controversy surrounding the sale of the team and possible relocation to Oklakoma City.
It's been really fun putting together these videos, mostly because Storm fans are SO responsive to the videos as they've played in-arena throughout the season. As a videographer/ filmmaker, it's not often you get an audience that's so reactive and engaged as the Storm fans have been with these videos, so it's really been fun.
Volume 5 - 2005-2007 - The Team is Sold
Volume 6 - 2008 - Force 10 Buys the Team
This is is is a behind the scenes look at a game day with 2009 All Star Game MVP Swin Cash. It's kind of ironic that the first line is "I'll always be an East Coast girl..." seeing as she just won the All Star MVP award playing for the WEST! We shot this at the June 26th game vs LA, Erik and I rode with Swin to the game while interviewing her. It was a really short ride, so we didn't get nearly as much interview time as we would've liked but we got enough. We also had a boom mic with us for this game, so we were able to get some good audio from Coach Agler in during timeouts and some other on-court audio from the players. I didn't end up using that much of it here, but I'm sure I'll be using it in other videos in the future. (Go to youtube to watch it in HD... or at least what youtube considers HD)
Some behind the scenes photos of our behind the scenes video shoot - photos by Neilson Eney
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Just got back from my trip to Sun Lakes today. Came back to find two more of my videos up on the Storm site. The first is of the Dance Troupe Auditions, which were the first thing I shot for the Storm this year, before I even knew if I had the contract for the season. I had 4 hours of footage because the plan was to make a series out of it with at least 3 episodes, one for each round of auditions, but it ended up being just one video. It was annoying to have so much footage for such a short video, but it did give me the luxury of using only the best of the best shots and sound bites. I was going for a reality show style and I think it turned out pretty well for the most part... although I didn't get as many good "confessional" type sound bites out of the kids as I would've liked to.
The next one is a video that Erik edited. This video announced for the first time the 10 members of the Storm's All-Decade Team, at the game on July 9th. This is the one that was supposed to play on ESPN2... but they didn't end up using it.
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This was a fun video to shoot. Ashley and her dad did a great job and seemed to have a good time despite having two cameras in their faces constantly. We shot this last Thursday evening and had a 90 second version ready to go by the Dads & Daughters game on Friday. This is the extended 3 minute version. Couple things that didn't make the cut... Ashley is afraid of birds, and she has a really crazy sounding sneeze.
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Part 1 of our Storm History Documentary is up on the Storm website. This is part 1 of what will be a six part series documenting the Storm's history. This episode focuses on the teams formation and first season, 1999-2000. It's made up of an interview we shot with Karen Bryant outside of KeyArena and a bunch of footage we found on beta tapes at the Storm office, including an old interview with Lin Dunn.