Fujinon Cameras

The camera of choice at WHAG is Fujinon. But why Fujinon vs. other camera brands?

The specs of Fujinon are highly rated. They have a powerful zoom, while retaining color pigmentation and avoiding blurring. The technology for Fujinon's broadcast TV lenses, with its expressive power of recreating colors with vivid clarity, has created a digital camera equipped with high image quality and a powerful zoom.

Special Guest

Occasionally WHAG news anchors like to spice up the show by bringing in guests from local businesses or fans who have something cool and unique to show the 4 state area.

On superbowl sunday the morning news anchor brought in 3 guests who made their favorite superbowl snack. Each guest arrived and waited off stage to be brought over to an NBC blue table where they went through the steps to create their superbowl snack. Like a cooking show they had a pre-made version of their dish.

Bringing in local guest makes the audience feel more connected to the show. Who doesnt love to see their friends or family members on tv. My father is a political figure who is frequently in the news and i still get excitment when seeing him on tv. It also makes the guest feel important and like their voice is being heard.

Bringing in guest not only spices up the run of the show but it makes the audience feel more connected to their local community and breaths new life into other kinds of morning news.

Lighting

Generally, the equipment used for stage lighting, such as the cabling, dimming and/or constant power equipment, and all forms of control are used in several different areas of Entertainment Lighting, such as Corporate Events, Concerts, Television and Film. At WHAG we use florescent lights 

Selective Visibility: The ability to see what is occurring on stage. Any lighting design will be ineffective if the viewers cannot see the characters, unless this is the explicit intent.
Revelation of form: Altering the perception of shapes onstage, particularly three-dimensional stage elements.
Focus: Directing the audience's attention to an area of the stage or distracting them from another.
Mood: Setting the tone of a scene. Harsh red light has a different effect than soft lavender light.
Location and time of day: Establishing or altering position in time and space. Blues can suggest night time while orange and red can suggest a sunrise or sunset. Use of mechanical filters ("gobos") to project sky scenes, the Moon, etc.
Projection/stage elements: Lighting may be used to project scenery or to act as scenery onstage.
Plot (script): A lighting event may trigger or advance the action onstage and off.
Composition: Lighting may be used to show only the areas of the stage which the designer wants the audience to see.

The WHAG Mobile

When news needs to be on the go there are two ways WHAG chooses to capture their breaking news. The traditional way, since microwave technology and satellite usage have been used to transmit live and packaged reporting, has been with the news truck. The newest high tech way is through the TRU pack, a backpack which holds all the equipment needed for on the go reporting.

Taking a look around your own home town it is almost impossible to never see a news truck. Whether it be at a baseball game or at the scene of an accident, there is always a news truck on the go ready to capture their next report.

In order to set up a news truck so it is ready to shoot you must first be aware of a few small things.

When doing short distances (Hagerstown-Shepherdstown) the truck can use its smaller dish, which raises up to a max height of 50 feet. The truck must be level in order for the dish to raise.

Another thing news reports and the techs must be weary of before they raise the dish is of possible obstacles in the way of the dish. This could be anything from a power line to a tree branch. If the dish were to hit an object, like a power line, the dish and vehicle will burst into flames. Literally it will burst into flames and fry everything within the vehicle.

The news truck also has the feature of on the go editing. A reported can capture all his/her shots and upload all of the data for editing outside of the newsroom. They can then send that edited data via satellite straight to the newsroom to be aired.

Teleprompter

From presidential elections to local live television the teleprompter has been used as the virtual note cards to feed lines to those who chose to speak on television.

The teleprompter conveys the idea that the talent has memorized their speech and gives the viewer the sense that the person on camera has vast knowledge of the subject they are speaking on. The teleprompter also allows the speaker to connect with the audience by looking them, what seems like, directly in the eye. Have you ever noticed when watching the news that the news anchor is practically looking at you without breaking eye contact? This is because the teleprompter is reflected onto a glass which is placed right in front of the camera.

The script, which is mostly written up by the anchor, is loaded onto a monitor backwards. the monitor is them mounted onto the camera at an angle that allows the anchor to read the reflection off of the highly reflective glass which is placed right in front of the camera.

The device started out in 1948 as a roll of butcher paper rigged up inside half of a suitcase. Actor Fred Barton Jr., a Broadway veteran, was nervous for those that had been either in theater or the movies, the transition to television was difficult, because there was a much greater need for memorizing lines. Instead of memorizing the same batch of lines over the course of months, Barton was now expected to memorize new lines on a weekly or even daily basis. Cue cards were sometimes used, but relying on unsteady stagehands to flip between them could sometimes cause catastrophic delays.

On April 21, 1949, Schlalfly submitted a patent application for his “television prompting apparatus,” and in the tradition of offstage “prompters” who had been relied upon to feed forgotten lines to actors, he called his device the TelePrompTer. At first, the machine was used for its intended purpose: televised entertainment. It was part of a live production for the first time on December 4, 1950, as actors in the CBS soap “The First Hundred Years” read their lines off a device mounted to the side of the camera. Now a telepropmter is a must have in the studio world both for live and taped TV.

Audio Board

Audio is arguably the most vital element when it comes to any form of televised media. If the audio is horrible quality it brings down every other element of the media. In live television the audio board operator is the last line of defense in the between what happens in the studio and on live TV.

The audio board operators job is to do two mic checks before each show. One check for all studio mics and the other for the talents volume settings. The operator must watch the overall levels through out the show when running SOT's (sound on tape) and Packages to ensure that it will stay at the same relative volume for each viewer. Have you ever noticed that the volume gets really loud out of no where when watching a TV program, but you haven't touched the remote? That is because the audio levels are not stable.

Other than the mics the audio board controls the Animation volumes, the Traffic Phone, Packages, and the NBC tease/ending music. When the director rolls the animation the audio operator fades the music so the on camera talent can be clearly heard by the viewer. Occasionally the animation will loop, meaning it will keep going even if it is not seen on camera. The audio operator has control over the sound of the animation. If the audio operator were to slide up the volume without paying attention the sound would be heard on live TV.

The audio operator also has the job to call in the Traffic alert team during weekday mornings.  The operator calls the traffic alert team on the phone and tells them to stand by. Once we lock in the line the phone is connected to the audio board, we then wait for the anchor to toss it to the traffic alert team and turn on the phone mic.

Working the audio board has been a stressful yet fun experience for me. There is a large amount of multitasking involved and you must be alert at all times when operating the board. The smallest change can greatly effect the outcome of the show.

Set Up for Show

This blog I thought I would discuss the day to day ruteen that a Production Assistant (PA) goes through before every show. I generally work the morning shifts which consist of the 5:30 AM and 6 AM show during the weekdays and a 6AM and 9 AM show during the weekends.

Every day I arrive at WHAG at 5:15 AM. My first job is to set up the studio and prep for the show. When I first come in I immediately get to cleaning the anchors news desk. Generally we clean the desk before the show, so it can get very dirty and covered in greasy hand prints from the 11 PM show the night before. I Windex and buff out the finger prints until the desk is clean.

Then I gather the mics and IFB's for the talent. the news station has 5 mics that we check twice before
every show, although most of the time we only use two mics. IFB's are special little electronic boxes that allow the director to communicate directly with the talent. Which is unlike the headsets we use to communicate since it is a closed channel that does not allow anyone but the specific talent and the director to communicate. The talent has this separate line so they do not get confused with the crews communication during a broadcast.

After the mics and IFB's are laid out I turn on the 4 large monitors used during the broadcast. These monitors are for the CHAT SET, ORANGE WALL, and BACK MONITOR at the anchors desk. The monitors produce live feed and images at the directors will to correspond to the news stories during the show.

At this point I wait for everyone else to show up, because I'm always early, so we can do the first mic check.  Once someone is set on the audio board the PA will get on the headset and check each mic. The person on audio will communicate via headset if the mic is functioning for the show. Once that is done we distribute the mics to the proper talent then place the remainder of them in the charging boxes. Once this task is complete we are officially done set up and ready to film the show!

Auditions

Today in Advanced productions we split ourselves into three groups of breaking down the production process. I was in the script/ talent group. We went into the studio to do a few read throughs of the script. While reading through the script we looked for inconsistencies, the flow of the dialog, and ways to improve the overall script. We also used this time to audition/ cast the different roles in the film.

Since the original script was written with the lead female character resembling myself I took the role of Natalie. We auditioned for the part of the Waiter, Dante, the two dead corpses, and Calvin. After about three to four read throughs with different actors reading for the part of Calvin our AD David came in to update us and take our notes over to the Director, Torin. At this time David went through the script with us and allowed the group to make some changes to the script.

One line I can recall that we were all adamant about removing was “Well hells bells”. As this line showed the personality of the writer, we felt it did not fit the character who was saying the line. That character is Natalie, a confident 20 something year old who has been around the dating block quite a few times. Since this felt unnatural to the character we chose to change the line to “Well”. Throughout the script you can sense the writers naivety towards the tinder dating/sexual situations placed within the script. This lead us to change quite a few lines in the original script.

Once we made the script changes I delivered the notes to Director Torin. It was at this time that I persuaded Sam, who was in a different production group, to audition for the part of Calvin via a recorded read through. All the actors and the Assistant Director watched as we recorded the final read through and came to a unanimous decision that Sam and I had the right balance of chemistry needed to play these two characters. We brought the final taping into the room for everyone in the class to see and solidified the decision of who got the part. 

The History of Green Screen

The Green Screen has been used in news rooms, music videos, and films for many years. Green Screen or “Chroma Keying” is a special effect usually implemented in post (unless you do live news). The technique composes, or layers, two images or video streams together. The color green used on green screens is based on the Chroma Range that allows this technique to remove the top layer (green) and replace it with another image behind it.

Green screens are green because the particular hue of green is not naturally found in most clothing or everyday modern styles. Green screens can also be blue, since blue is another color easy to remove and layer. However, blue is typically found in most clothing and therefore more troublesome to work with when dealing with live news. If the weather caster wears a color too similar to the color of the green/ blue screen their clothing will be replaced with the background video.

From my experience working at NBC there has only been one incident while I was present with the clothing option of our weather girl and the green screen. She had worn a dress with a lime green/yellow color block on the front of the dress. She had no other clothes to change into and her whole chest had disappeared on air. In order to solve this situation she chose to do all of her casting from the weather center and going in to what we call “graphics” which is what would be on the green screen without her being on camera.

Before the implementation of the green screen in weather forecasting the forecaster would stand in front of a wall with a large map on it a use magnets or similar devices to show the weather manually vs. the highly technological way we use to show the weather now.

The First Aesthetic Field: Light

There are four fundamental and contextual image elements. These are light and color, space, time/motion, and sound. For this blog I will discuss light.

Light is arguably one of the most important things in life. It allows us to see the word around us and express our inner emotions through with different colors. With the influence of lighting we can change the mood in a film from a tranquil scene to an energized one. Moulin Rouge is a very good example. Throughout the film each scene is either enrobed in a passionate red or a mournful blue. This has a strong influence on the audience as to what emotions they are experiencing during the course of the scene.

 

With light comes shadow, which can be utilized as an artistic tool or eliminated from the film. In the film Sin City we see the starkness of light and shadow play to enhance the theme of the subject of which it is lighting. We can also see how muted and enhanced colors play alongside the shadows and light to create a unique artistic style.

Falloff is another form of shadow that comes into play when lighting a scene. With Low-Key lighting fast-falloff can be utilized to emphasize the lighted objects surface texture. With High-Key lighting slow-falloff or no-falloff can be used to reduce or even eliminate texture. As you can see in the picture below the same woman is lit from four different angles. This expresses how drastic lighting angles can have on a subject. 

A strong understanding for these four image elements (light and color, space, time/motion, and sound) will allow you to establish an impact, optimum clarity, and a unique personal style to the medium of your choosing.