Multimedia
Blogs
Forum
Affordable HD
Whitepapers
Newsletters
Events
Advertisers
Blogcast
MillimeterCommon Goal
Oct 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Story and photos by Bill Miller
Wally Franco (pictured) shares the technical directing duties with J. W. Griffith for the 12-hour day. The pair uses a Sony MVS-8000 HD/SD multi¬format switcher to keep the show on track.
One crew member who has definitely left his ego at the stage door is Technical Director J. W. Griffith. His talent far exceeds his modesty. Griffith plays his Sony MVS-8000 HD/SD multiformat switcher like a grand piano. He tells me he's a drummer who never made it to the big time. So he got into television, where he's been making images fly for more than 30 years. His body bounces to the beat of the rhythm, and he rarely looks down at the glowing buttons beneath his fingers. He speaks with the authority of a video philosopher, not a techie.
“You can't look at the switcher,” he says. “If you do, you are undoubtedly late; you may screw one of your camera guys. They may not quite be settled when the director calls their number. You've got to always watch those monitors. You touch the switcher with feel. Each of my fingers is assigned a different task. This is what I'll be doing 'til the day I die. It's all I know.”
Because it is a 12-hour day, Griffith shares technical directing with Wally Franco of Somerset, Mass., one of a handful of locals on the crew. Farm Aid is not a fast-cut, machine-gun approach as are some heavy-metal music concerts. The goal is to have the audience see the performers and hear the music. There are even some dissolves thrown in for good measure.
The Farm Aid broadcast is more than just the music. “We really want to engage the viewer,” says Patty Ishimoto, general manager of the 101 Network and vice president of original entertainment for DirecTV. “This year, the broadcast is loaded with interactive information. The customer at home can pick up their remote, press their red button, and access information on the artist that is performing at the particular time. They can also participate in a trivia quiz or get facts on Farm Aid. We are moving toward a more commercial-free format to make it a very positive viewer experience. We're also matching dollar-for-dollar each viewer contribution to Farm Aid.”
“I am responsible for the signal leaving here safely and ultimately making sure we get it on the air to our customers in both HD and SD,” says John Ward, vice president of production for DirecTV. One unique aspect of this production is the fact that all of the cameras are being ISOed for later use using HDCAM SR recorders. “It's kind of rare that on an HD remote you'd see a ton of tape machines,” Ward says. (The production is being produced in 1080i at 29.97fps.)
Spevak likes to ISO all of his cameras because from this live performance, he'll cut four 1-hour specials that will air later in the year.
The final step in getting the broadcast back to headquarters in Los Angeles is compression and transmission. This is in the capable hands of Bob Adler of Coastal Media Group. “We take two feeds from the production truck,” Adler says. “A primary and a backup as well as Dolby 5.1 and a backup stereo pair. This goes into a Harris [NetVX SYS-350] HD encoder that compresses it down to about 40Mb of MPEG-2, and we send those down digital fiber circuits to the DirecTV Broadcast Operations Center in Los Angeles [full-band HD is 1.5Gbps].” The signal is then uplinked via satellite to DirecTV customers as MPEG-4.
Before sitting down to direct the show, Jordan tells me he wouldn't trade his job with anyone. “I tell young folks who're just starting to do live television, ‘You never balk; you never think about a mistake or something that didn't go exactly as planned, because if you stop to think about it, you're dead in the water,’” he says. “And if you're worrying about what went wrong or who made a mistake, you'll never recover. It takes a while to get the comfort level to go with things that might go wrong. That's not to mean I'm not having a mere heart attack in that [director's] chair 2,500 times during the concert; it just means I am going to try not to.” Twelve hours later, he's still smiling.
Bill Miller is owner of Bill Miller Video Productions. He has been producing films and video for more than four decades. Reach him at bill@billmillerfilm.com.
To comment on this article, email the Digital Content Producer editorial staff at feedback@digitalcontentproducer.com.
Continue the discussion on Crosstalk the Millimeter Forum.