shooting a round table conference

[arti]

Hi. I have to film a conference with about 2000 atendees sitting in a stadium type of seating with speakers sitiing in the centre in a round table formation. where should i place my cameras to get the faces of all speakers/as i do not want to get only their backs? should i use a jib/place cameras on the ceiling. i will be doing on the spot mixing to be projected on to big screens at the venue. Please help.

[D0n]

need more info.

how many cameras?

how many people at the table?

what other equipment do you have? ie jib/crane?

[Rob]

You absolutely can’t do this with one camera. We did a talk show in school with a round table lay out and used 3 cameras. I did the planning and sketched out a diagram of the lay out, and of course I needed to know how many people were sitting at the table to do that. As I made the diagram, I marked where the cameras would be and who they would cover in order to maintain the 180 degree rule. In the end, the 3 cameras were spaced out pretty evenly and were the 3 points of a triangle around the table.

Unfortunately this is pretty complicated and I can’t really explain how I did it without showing you my diagram. It’s also hard to pull off if you don’t have a good director(which we didn’t cause I was the producer and planned the whole thing. So I wasn’t allowed to direct. And I’m still bitter about that.)

If you can wrap your head around the 180 degree rule and plan which camera you’re going to cut to when people talk, you’ll be OK.

We also had one camera on a dolly which made for a sweet shot when the dolly operator wasn’t busy complaining.

And don’t shoot from a camera on the ceiling. That will look like crap.

If you can’t pull this off, come up with a plan B. I’d suggest a semi circle layout, which will be less mind boggling when planning and shooting.

[Anonymous]

You might want to make sure you will actually have an audience surrounding your speakers. It isn’t a very frequent situation. In all of my “round table discussions” with an audience present, the experts were either in a straight row on the stage or placed in a “V formation” with a moderator podium in the center. “Round table” defines the way the speakers address the audience, not how they are arranged.

Hope it works out for you.

[Author]

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