Gym lighting – HELP!

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone.

I have been asked to videotape a bunch of different speakers at a conference for some training DVDs.

The speakers will be in a high school gym. The gym has typical high ceilings with flourescent lighting. There are large windows high up on one side of the gym. When I visited the location a few months ago, the lighting seemed to be good enough…no dark shadows or weird colors. I figured that I didn’t need any extra lighting. What do you all think?

My main concerns are as follows:
1) Changing natural light. If the windows are kept open, the natural light coming into the gym is going to change, and that is going to be visible in the final video. I can’t constantly be changing settings because I will be continually videotaping a speaker for 30-45 minutes at a time. What’s the best way to handle this?
2) I don’t want it to look like I’m shooting in a gym. Are the flourescent lights going to give me away?

Oh, also, another concern. A few of the speakers will be using PowerPoint presentations. In my experience, when panning or zooming from a live subject to a monitor or lit screen, the camera takes a good few seconds to reorient itself. How do I compensate for that?

Thank you in advance! I really appreciate all the help you guys provide!

[ralck]

Not too sure about the lighting… maybe you could flag the sun and agument with some video lights? You use flourscents to try to keep all the same color temp?

As far as the powerpoint, I see two options you could consider:
1. Film the powerpoint with a second camera so no panning is needed and you can just cut between the two cameras in editing.
2. See if you can get electronic copies of the presentations and insert slides into the project for a few seconds when you want to refer to the powerpoint.

Good luck!

[TomScratch]

UPDATED, Par 3, 7/13/07

Hi,

Florescent (green) plus daylight… What direction are windows, north south plane or east or west; could be a big diff. Consider re-doing white balance during program breaks. Main concern may be getting enough light on speakers for crisp images. If they have podium lights (typically yellow, maybe green), that might even be enough.

Hard to make a gym look like the penthouse meeting room of The Mandarin Hotel. If your shoot looks like a gym, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s that sow’s ear thing. The speaker’s organization accepted a gig in a gym. If that comes through in the video, it will be a nostalgic moment, not a what was that video guy thinking moment.

Can you borrow or get copy of the Power Point presentation to take back to studio. That’s the ideal. A second cam on the PP screen would work. Or, if you can get copy of PP pres, the second cam could be a lesser camera, for the record only and not for insert or master purposes, shooting wide to include speaker and slides, so that in post you can look at precise synchronization bet speaker and slides on aux monitor and not have to figure it out, agonize, or guess.

An even bigger challenge may be audio recording. Will you be connected to house system. (Have you road tested this setup…) I think I’d go with a wireless mic at the podium or podiums or on the speakers (although this might interrupt natural flow of program); with maybe a backup that is not drenched in gym echochochocho…

Have a great shoot!

REGARDS … TOM 8)

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all your suggestions!

Honestly, I have no idea which directions the windows are…

As for audio, I have wireless lav mics for the speakers and wireless handheld mics for audience participation. All the mics are going into a mixer that will be plugged into a Mac for recording on the computer…is this a horrible idea? (I’ll also be exporting the sound into a Sony MiniDisc recorder as a backup.) I have the option of setting up the frequencies on my wireless lav mics. Can anyone give me any clue as to what frequency I should be on?

Thanks everyone!!!

[Anonymous]

Huzzah Wrote:

Honestly, I have no idea which directions the windows are…

You want to be sure that any windows behind the area you are shooting in are covered somehow. Shooting into light (windows letting light through included) tends to cause bad video.

As for audio, I have wireless lav mics for the speakers and wireless handheld mics for audience participation. All the mics are going into a mixer that will be plugged into a Mac for recording on the computer…is this a horrible idea? (I’ll also be exporting the sound into a Sony MiniDisc recorder as a backup.) I have the option of setting up the frequencies on my wireless lav mics. Can anyone give me any clue as to what frequency I should be on?

If you can, run the sound into your camera as well, and (if possible via an aux send), record a separate track of all mics open at union, in case the person working the board misses a cue or something unexpected happens.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your help, everyone.

I actually had the shoot this weekend, and as far as I can tell, it went OK. I haven’t gone back and watched or listened to all the video yet, so i won’t know for sure until then.

But again, I appreciate everyone’s feedback.

[Author]

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