Development in school based multi camera shooting

We were recently asked by a primary school to help them shoot a quality video recording of their Junior School Nativity Play 'The Shiniest Star', which was performed in December 2004. In order to make this happen, we have been involved in creating an exciting development of digital video use in schools. Although we have come across a few individuals using this technique for wedding videos, we have not come across its use to capture a school play or performance. Needless to say, the school are delighted by the outcome, as are pupils and parents alike.

There are fundamentally two quite different ways in which a video or a television programme is created. A documentary, a drama, or a news story shot on location will almost invariably have been shot using a single camera. In this situation, the action is discontinuous as the director moves the camera around to get different shots, does re-takes, etc. If you have ever seen a crew in action, with someone shouting 'action' and 'cut', you will know what is involved. This kind of filming presents many different ways of being cut together, and quite often a lot of time is spent in the cutting room.

However when the coverage is of a performance, a concert, a sporting event, or maybe the event is live, then a multi camera approach will be used. Traditionally this will involve either a television studio or an outside broadcast, and the director and the vision mixer will be able to choose between shots offered by a number of well positioned cameras, and by cutting from one shot to another they create a programme in real time, which can even be broadcast live. You also sometimes see the presenter looking at the wrong camera by mistake!

Although occasionally a school might have access to a television studio which would allow them to create a multi camera video, by and large schools use a single camera approach when they are working with digital video. However a Nativity Play in front of a live audience demands a multi camera approach. Why? Well it is simply not possibly to produce a decent looking result if you try and shoot a play with a single camera. Partly because a single camera cannot always be in the right place. But equally importantly unless you settle for a wide shot of the whole performance, which will quickly become boring since video depends on a variety of shots, you are forced to zoom in and out all the time, which will induce a certain amount of motion sickness when viewed. There are also issues with capturing the sound.

Drawing on our experience in broadcasting, we devised a multi camera approach for The Shiniest Star, using a number of Digital Video (DV) cameras already owned by the school. The cameras were operated by the teachers, and rather than someone having to cut between shots in real time, we used an editing technique that allowed all the different videos to be synchronised, so that a click of the mouse allowed the teachers to decide when to cut to camera 1, and when to cut to camera 3, and so on. This type of editing is relatively quick, since there is a master sound track, and the user is just cutting between different camera angles.

Multicamera editing allows the teacher/pupil to decide which camera to cut to, at the click of the mouse

Once editing was completed, The Shiniest Star was turned into a video DVD with a menu system to locate the different tracks, and the school sold copies to parents. The advantage of a DVD is that the video quality is very high, and that the disc can be played on a PC, a Mac or a home DVD player.

School plays require a lot of hard work and enthusiasm from pupils, parents and staff alike, and there are great benefits to be able to capture a high quality video record of these projects. Pupils are highly motivated by having their performances recorded, and the staff were so pleased with the result that just a few months later they decided to embark on another DVD, this time of the Year 6 production The Terrible Adventures of Franky M, written by a member of staff.

For this project, two of the three camera operators were year 6 pupils. This was valuable since it meant that there were other roles available for students who did not want to act in the play. And indeed one of the camera operators had their self esteem lifted so much when the final video was projected onto the IWB in class, that all the teachers in the school noticed the subsequent change, not just the form teacher.

Since there were two completely different casts, each 30 pupils strong, it was decided to record both evenings, and to create two DVDs! So in the space of a few months, one primary school has created 3 DVDs!

A few of the Technical Issues

There are a number of things that have to be addressed, in order for a project like this to work well. In terms of sound, for instance, the built in microphones on DV cameras are not all that good, so it is preferable to use a separate microphone(s). In this case, the camera will need to have a mic socket so that an external microphone can be plugged in. Alternatively, for a large cast that is very spread out, a number of strategically placed micorphones is needed, which is what we did for The Shiniest Star. These went via a sound mixing desk, and the master sound was recorded by one of the cameras. If there is a lot of electrical equipment and amplifiers being used, then there is a danger of Radio Frequency (RF) interference, and it is important to use balanced cables.

Mic inputs and line inputs work at very different voltages, and are not interchangeable. When using a mixing desk, which will give a line output, but feeding into a DV camera that requires a mic input, the use of attenuators is reccommended, to avoid at best distortion, and at worst blowing the audio circuitry on the camera.

Camera operators need some briefing, in order to understand the principles of multicamera shooting, and the cameras need to be correctly positioned in order to get correct sightlines. And DV cameras often do not work too well in very low light, so it is advisable to make sure that there is sufficient light.

The editing technique depends on synchronising the different tapes, and therefore the cameras need to run throughout the performance. On occassion, one of the cameras was stopped briefly by accident and then restarted. It is possible to repair these situations, but a little time consuming.

Multicamera editing involves handling a number of DV streams at one time. Given that a DV tape will take about 12Gb of hard drive space, it is clear that the editing machine will need a large hard drive, and that it will need quite a bit of processing power and RAM. We have been using a P4 Dell desktop, with a 200Gb hard drive and 1Gb of RAM, which has handled 3 DV streams comfortably.

Depending on the numbers involved, the finished DVD can either be sent off for replication, when the company makes a glass master, and normally prints your artwork onto the disc as well, or duplication, where the disc is duplicated by being burned onto blank DVD discs. This process is the most economical for smaller numbers of discs. Alternatively, with a DVD burner you can do the process yourself, although it is a bit time consuming if you need 100s of discs. For a professional finish, you can even print your own design on the discs.

Copies of The Shiniest Star DVD can be obtained from Great Kingshill School. Contact Roger Dodds, Head, on 01494 713159.

Read the TES article about the project...

Hendrik Ball

This work was supported by a Bill Tagg Bursary, awarded by Naace