This year, due to the world-wide COVID pandemic, our beloved San Diego Comic-Con – like so many other Festivals and Cons – has moved online. I was tasked by Freeform Network to produce a panel discussion for the cast of “Motherland: Fort Salem” and boy did it have its challenges!
For starters, the cast was spread out all over the planet in Vancouver, London, Sweden, South Africa and Los Angeles. Secondly, one doesn’t get to just call up Actress Taylor Hickson and talk production deets! No, I talk to our Freeform Publicists, FFPs talk to Taylor Management Team, TMT talks to Taylor Hickson. And the reverse chain once she replies. And we had six cast members, one show runner and the moderator! Talk about herding cats…er… I mean cast!
Anyway, here’s my Top 10 Takeaways…
1. ALWAYS DO A TECH SCOUT
Two weeks prior to production, we lined up a 30-minute time slot with each Panelist where we introduced ourselves, did a SpeedTest.net internet check, lighting and room check, microphone checks and discussed wardrobe (no logos, no small thin lines/patterns, the usual). Also we checked to make sure they had room on their phones for the 4 to 8gb needed for a 45m recording.
Now, because of the schedule we didn’t have time to ship out ring lights and mics internationally so we had to make do with what each of them had on hand. For example, those with ear pods (wireless or wired) sounded less noise-y. Clearer. The point is we had time to check each setup and respond with individual attention to make them look and sound as good as possible.
1a. OOPS
The one thing I missed during Tech Scout was that South Africa when filmed at 30fps causes problems with the lighting which is powered by an AC current of 50hz which meant that there was a strobing zebra pattern on that phone footage so we had to mostly rely on the zoom footage (recorded at 25fps) which looked fine. D’oh!
2. HARNESS THE POWER OF ZOOM
This app is fairly robust. It requires remarkably little internet bandwidth to work smoothly, for one (2.5 mbps recommended). Also, it allows you to handpick who enters the room when. Our publicists and I could get everything setup and then bring in all the panelists and their teams.
When it came down to recording, everyone but the Panelists muted audio/video leaving only the 8-way stream. I recorded the 8-way and had another person record full-screen speaker mode.
3. iPHONE CAMERAS LOOK WAY BETTER THAN ZOOM RECORDINGS
We triple shot everything! Like I said, we had them on an 8-way Zoom recording (and speaker view version) as backup with each audio stream separated out, and then we had them place their iPHONEs on stands as close to the laptop/iPad Camera as possible so we would have a similar shot/angle on a much prettier camera. How much prettier?
Well take a look at the difference:
iPHONE 11 (left) vs. Zoom Camera Footage (right)
See? Also, this way if there were any WIFI or connectivity glitches, I told them just to keep answering and the others to keep nodding and I’d fix it in post because we’d have the good footage from their phones.
4. LABEL DETAILS MATTER
On the zoom calls we made sure to rename each person’s lower third to their professional first and last name instead of whatever default zoom account they’d logged into like “Dad’s Account”. Then when Zoom recorded all the separate audio tracks, they come pre-named with each person’s proper ID. Very handy. Label that stuff properly!!
5. BIG FILES ARE A PAIN TO TRANSFER
For us video pros we deal with 10gb or 75gb or 250gb files all the time. No problem. But most people at home over their personal WiFi is a whole other world to contend with. Most of the panelists just uploaded their footage to Google Drive and shared the footage with my email address. One person did WeTransfer because hers was under their 2gb limit. But most were in the 4 to 6gb range.
Someone suggested DropBox but I have just never had a good experience with dropbox. DropBox will make it sound like you have to upgrade to some Pro account just to receive a file from someone. Or you both have to sign up for accounts and get spammed the rest of your life and ain’t nobody got time for that!
6. SHOOT MORE THAN YOU NEED
This goes without saying but we had up to a 45-minute target time for the final edited run time so we shot about 54 minutes of panelist discussion and I just pulled from the best material and cut out all the fluff.
Final run time: 45 min 00 sec. Boom.
7. LEAN ON ADOBE PREMIERE’S AUTO SYNC FUNCTION
For each Panelist, I would select three things: the Zoom 8-way Master Shot and 8-track Mix of Audio and then select the iPhone footage they sent me (sometimes there were two or more clips instead of one nice clean one-shot…ugh!) and tell Premiere to make a multiCam clip synced by Audio. Boom! Almost perfect every time.
I did have to slip and slide a few frames on some of them because I got footage at 25fps, 29.97fps, 30.02(?)fps? Just whatever their phones felt like recording on the day.
8. DON’T LEAN ON ADOBE PREMIERE’S NESTED SEQUENCES
I originally tried to bring each multiCAM clip into my MASTER sequence with just the main video and primary audio solo’d but that didn’t work out. For one, I suspect Premiere had trouble reconciling that many different frame rates and so it wasn’t displaying properly. It was glitchy and 45 minutes long times the 10 streams of video which was taxing it greatly.
For two, more importantly, you lose your audio wave forms (VITAL for editing quickly!) And so I just used the MultiCAM SYNC to lock picture and audio and then brought over the primary video/audio track from each Panelist into the master timeline.
9. THE ZOOM MULTI-MIX WORKED SURPRISINGLY WELL
For the most part, audio-wise, I leaned on the Zoom multi-mix because we had people talking over each other and laughter and responses that I wanted to include. Then sometimes someone would give a 20-30 sec answer and so I might go to their camera mic for that answer.
But there’s a big difference between Camera mic and Zoom recordings so you couldn’t cut those back to back. Had to hide it. So I ended up relying 90% probably on the full zoom mix.
10. FOR EXPORTS, WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER
I had less than 3 days to turn this edit around top to bottom and it took about 1 1/2 hours to export each REVIEW. On top of that, again, because I was maxing out Premiere with my Laptop constraints, random glitches would appear upon export.
Like, out of nowhere on poor Eliot’s face….
Eliot! Pull yourself together, man!
So, I would export a 1080p ProRes 422 version from which I’d compress the low rez REVIEW H264 with Time Stamp to send to Publicists for REVIEW. That way the video I’m referencing and the approvers are referencing have all the same glitches in all the same places.
Then I would re-import that ProRes and lay it up on Video Track 12 at the top of my MASTER TIMELINE. As I scrolled through it, I’d cut a hole in any glitchy shots but keep the rest of the top-level ProRes video. So, once I’d made round #1 changes and exported a SECOND time, instead of a 90 minute render it only took 8 minutes.
Voila! I’d re-import that v2 PRORES and then I’d only have to spot check for glitches where there were holes in the previous timeline. Saved SO MUCH TIME!!!! Is this what it feels like to be a genius for like 30 seconds? Phew.
So, anyway, that was my first International COVID production shot, edited and in the can!! Badda boom badda bing !!! Watch it here starting Sunday, July 26 at 10am PST.
Any questions, class?
Alrighty then!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: S. David Acuff lives in North Hollywood, CA and edits full-time for Walt Disney Television. He enjoys doing voice work for Audible projects (The Barnburner, The WOW Factor Workplace, Where An Angel’s On a Rope) as well as animated characters (Angel Wars, Herman Goes to School). He authored the epic Sci Fi story Historians Proper available on Amazon as well as wrote/edited the feature film, Restoration, distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
His life-motto is very simply, “What doesn’t kill you makes you funnier!”
Follow him on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest: @davidacuff