So, the good news and the bad news is that I have been so busy working lately that I have not had time to do much with this blog. I guess in this economy, that is more good news than it is bad. Last night I shot for WSB TV, the Atlanta ABC affiliate station. They had a
special event at the Fox Theater to honor Monica Kaufman-Pearson who is retiring after 37 years of anchoring the news. It was interesting to learn that when she was hired, the other people under consideration for the job were Jane Pauley and Oprah Winfrey. The Emcee of the event last night was Robin Roberts, host of Good Morning America. We shot multi-camera untethered--meaning all editing will be done in post. The greatest difficulty was getting good crowd shots. You always end up at the mercy of the house lighting in these situations, and unfortunately they did not keep the level where we had asked them to. For most of the program it was extremely dark in the audience--and even +9db of gain was not enough. It will take some work in post to get the levels right. Another issue was shooting against an LED wall as a backdrop only a few feet behind the podium. It can be very difficult to find the focus on the subject with the competing lights--and peaking indicators are practically useless. It was quite a challenge. The one-hour prime time special will air in two weeks or so on WSB.
