The Making of You Show Episode 6

Maybe more polished? With the help of Jon Fulton on camera and set up, Brian and Alan take the You Show to an auditorium (a long way from the first episode using the couch in Brian’s apartment). They have screen talk overs as they “rate” the work by You Show participants. And when they go to check on the tech guys…

The plan for this goes back to the early conversations Brian and I had about our videos. We knew we wanted a riff on a movie review show, the Siskel and Ebert kind where they are seated in the seats of a theater.

Actually Brian lobbied more for a Tim and Eric’s On Cinema at the Cinema, hence our regular “goofiness”.

After the makeover as suggested by The Consultant from Vancouver, Brian and Alan are wearing suit jackets, and the setting is the Clock Tower Building’s Alumni Theater at TRU. Jon brought the two camera setup, lights, wireless lav mics. The script for this episode is “New Beginnings” (get the reference?).

Calling the Shots
cc licensed ( BY-SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

ep-opening

For the opening, we have it shot from the wide angle of the side camera, that Alan and Brian have progressed in their technical chops so they are setting things up themselves (although Jon really did it all) and talking about all the changes.

Recording the You Show
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Jon has us each wired with wireless mics that are going into the main camera, so I had to separate the better audio from the other camera and match it to the footage from the side camera.

The opening music is “Pamgaea” one of the tracks from the excellent Incompetech collection.

side-shots

Because Jon had continuous footage from both cameras, I had plenty of bits to choose from to overlay the short “side” angles. This is a motif I tried from the start (having never done it before) and is easy in iMovie. I just grab the short clip, put it in the top track. By expanding the timeline so I can see the wave forms, I jog it until the audio overlaps. Then I mute the top track, and add a black and white effect.

ep6-screen-talk

I wanted to add the type of shots where in movie review shows they take turns talking about one in detail. Usually it’s a side angle, but we just setup a shot where we were framed to leave room for the screen.

cc licensed ( BY-SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

These are added as a second track (a screen shot of the web sites we were discussing) using the Picture in Picture overlay effect. For the segments Brian showed, the audio work by Joseph and Gail, I imported the audio so we can hear them. Since I did not have long footage of Brian, I made those full screen cutaways.

ratings

This was the fun part; I wanted to make it so our ratings appear like Tim and Eric do (the joke is they give nearly everything “5 stars”). We decided to do “5 retweets”.

The way I did this was to make a Photoshop template with all the elements in separate layers. I make the size 960×720 so it matches the aspect ratio of iMovie. I exported a series of background transparent PNGs where the elements are added one by one- here is a GIF showing the 6 that make up the PNGs for the retweets:

ratings

These are added to the overlay track, and because they are background transparent PNGs that superimpose on the screen. I found the perfect “BOOP” sound in the iMovie sound effects library; it’s called “Bottle Cork”, and I was able to match them to the appearance of each frame.

upstairs

We flowed right from the end of the show where Brian and Alan talk as they walk up the stairs to find the technical guys in the booth. Again, because we were wearing wireless mics we got perfect audio. We just walked towards the door at the top (actually an exit).

We would have needed Security to unlock the booth in the theater, so we opted to go back to the Open Learning lab where we did our other shots. It was Jon’s brilliant film idea to keep continuity to start is coming out of the hallway door and walk into the lab. Brian told me he had an ad-libbed line. I had no idea what it was until we were filming. Funny guy.

My idea was that we would find the door closed and no one responding, but Jon suggested just walking in the open door. He wanted us to then close the door. I was not sure what he had in mind, and I cut the door close, but now I see that was part of the continuity. I messed up in editing Jon!

where-are-they

For the ending, Brian and Alan walk into the booth, and find nothing of the tech guys, only their glasses and hat. It was an on the moment idea to have Teshu, our student assistant, be in the room, and turn around to tell us “You don’t need those guys anyway”.

This turned out to be brilliant. We happened to run into her at her desk as we were getting ready, and asked her if she wanted to be part of our silliness (that’s her voice saying “Cut, it’s a wrap”). It worked out even better than the script.

Audio Check
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That was a fairly easy shoot, but what made it really work was having a video pro, thanks Jon.

And with all that footage… well there has to be outtakes.