Live Streaming Action!
Today was the day of our live-stream!
Since I was assigned the role as camera op/cable basher on Monday, my tasks today consisted of checking the settings on all three cameras, controlling the safety camera in the middle, acting as a cable basher for the 'roaming camera' and, in turn, filming as the 'roaming camera' together with Hannah and Has.
In the beginning, I was really nervous and hesitant since I was afraid of committing any mistakes while operating the roaming camera, such as being caught on one of the other cameras live-streaming, being too slow in pulling focus or finding the current speaker in the audience. The feel of a conference that is to be live streamed is strange at first and it gave me kind of performance pressure, even behind the camera.
However, I quickly had to get rid of that fear half an hour into the conference, for Hannah - who has been operating the roaming camera since the beginning - started to feel fatigue and lost concentration. So I jumped in, with an even more jumping heart, and tried to settle into my new roll as quickly and smartly as possible.
Being on the roaming camera made me realise on why Hannah needed a break after just half an hour. It is an highly demanding and exhausting job to take care of it since it requires you to be on your feet constantly and to be concentrated all the time.
You need to follow the conversation to pick up on the current speaker, be quick enough on your feet to capture them on footage, sharp and as close as possible, framing them according to the rule of thirds, all the while you need to try and keep the rest of the crew out of shot as much as possible.
The worst part though is physical exhaustion. Although we used a monopod to rest our arms and the camera once in a while, I started shaking quite early nonetheless, at least earlier than I wanted, which in turn compromised the quality of the footage.
I thus decided that I would use the OIS - Optical Image Stabiliser - whenever I started to feel fatigue or shake slightly. I did not want to use it the entire time, since the OIS-function heavily eats away at the battery, causing it to only last up to a maximum of an hour long in all the cases I witnessed so far. And since we were using up batteries really quick, I wanted to avoid using them faster than they can be recharged on the station.
However, as with all practical work, it was just a matter of getting into the habit of doing this and actually do them. Within one hour, I had already lost my insecurities and established a quick workflow for myself. I lost all doubts of my work and just kept on filming whenever I was operating the roaming camera. Whenever I saw a good opportunity I just pointed my camera at it and made it as good looking as possible in any given situation.
I was reminded of what our guest lecturer Fefe back in November said when I asked him of how he managed to compile such impressive footage of Chernobyl when he would sometimes only have less than three minutes in total to film certain objects. His answer back then was that he just enters a sort of 'mental zone' when he sees objects entirely through the lens of his camera, blocking the rest of the world out and being completely focused on the footage at hand. I had a similar experience after using the roaming camera for a while and I repeatedly ended up losing complete track of time, forgetting my doubts and just focus on the task, the camera settings, and the battery life whenever I entered that 'zone'. It felt like a cinematographer's high.
Has, Hannah, and I made sure to take turns and thus made it easy for all of us to share the workload and responsibility. After approx. eight hours, the conference and thus the live stream was finished. It was a challenging, demanding day, even more so because of the fact that I was still battling a cold, but I was still proud of my achievements and we ended up de-rigging our setup and returning it faster than we had put it up the day before.
In the end, it was a fun experience and gave me a lot of insight into live-production and into its organisation, as well as a lot of confidence on the camera. Since I really need to lose my intimidation if I want to become a successful cinematographer, I felt that this exercise, as surprising as it was to us at the beginning of the week, really helped me go a step forward in my journey.
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