Production Wisdom
What we did this year for the tours worked well. We used a DV camera and hooked up a directional mic to it. You need a 2-man crew to operate. One person films while the other holds the mic.
Using point and shoot cameras to record video worked well also. It captures the sound relatively well and is easy to move around with.
Problems:
You will need to bring at least 2 batteries, and constantly be swapping and charging the used battery. We also brought 10 tapes which need to be swapped as well.
For the interviews we used the isight webcams with a microphone. It ended up recording a buzzing sound from the laptop as well. We recommend that you don't use the isight cameras. If you have access to a hard drive camcorder, we suggest that you use that. If not, the system that we had for the tours worked well.
What also helps is if you have a 3rd person time-coding everything. It makes it easier to remember what happened during which tape.
Everyone should have access to the website.
The most important thing is to figure out how to manage everything. You should form a web team of people who know html, css and flash.
There should also be a quality control team, or maybe even just one dedicated person to this job. He or she should be checking for spelling and grammar issues, as well as the image quality that is being uploaded on a regular basis. If you leave it to the end, you won't have time to do it all.
We had a team of people doing the interviews. We suggest that everyone do their own interviews, because you will know your designer/firm better than anyone else.
After your weekly presentations, we suggest that you edit for grammar and upload it straight away to Slideshow Pro. You can go to Italy without worrying about it and it is also one less step when you get back. Once again, there should be a quality control person who checks everything to make sure it is all uploaded properly and without errors.
We suggest that you place technical people in the slideshow team. There is a lot of tedious work to do.
When in-field, shoot video with the digicams with the idea of putting in the slideshow, such as transitions and transcendent moments. We only decided to put certain videos in the slideshow when we came back. You will have many more options if you shoot with this in mind.
For the first two weeks, we had everyone working on the slideshow. Everyone would select their own photos and put it on the hard drive. We made teams for each city to go through and find the best pictures based on the soundtrack that Russell picked out.
This process worked well for us, but what can speed this process up is if you select your best photos each day in-field, and select a certain time where everyone can upload their photos to the hard drive, for example once a week at one of the apartments.
There were a lot of technical decisions and problems that we ran into.
The first was which program to use, because we wanted to use video in our slideshow. We chose Imovie over Final Cut Pro because it had an easier workflow. However, you can only run it using a good computer with a huge hard drive, such as Woojin's Mac Pro.
If you do go through the Imovie route, you can read below.
One of the first problems that we ran into was why the sound got deleted when you moved or deleted pictures. This was extremely frustrating as we had to redo certain sections numerous times.
The solution was to lock the first picture with the sound, so that you can delete and move photos after the first one without deleting the sound.
We also had to manually adjust the ken burns affect for all images. There is no way to avoid this, as you will have to adjust the speed and what to focus on for each photo. You may not even want to use the affect for certain images, as was in our case.
In order to run Slideshow Pro, you need to install the Flash component which will be left with you.
Slideshow Pro is a content management system which allows you to upload pictures, sounds and videos. You use a flash file to grab the albums and galleries through XML links.
Problems that we ran into were that Slideshow Pro does not currently support Leopard. It should be working by the time you need it, but if not, all you need to do is upgrade the drivers for it.
What we did not have time to do is figure out how to dynamically link the XML in the html doc. If you do have time, you can try and figure it out which would make it much easier for you when doing the maps.
If you are having problems, you can always take a look at the html for the Rome, Tuscany, Florence and Milan projects and just reverse engineer that.
It is important to keep your files organized from the start of the Field School. If not, when you start doing the slideshow, or searching for videos and interviews, you will be spending extra time searching instead of your actual task.
We had a set folder hierarchy which everyone used to organize their photos.
For example, there would be a Woojin Folder. Within that there would be a folder for each city. In one of the cities it would be broken down into days. In each day there would be a folder for each event including transitions between events.
This seems tedious to do, but is very helpful when you get back from Italy.
What also helps is if you have someone making a list of everywhere you went. It is a good frame of reference in case someone forgets.
Before you go into the technical stuff, we suggest that you figure out the structure of how it will look and work. You do not want to start making it and then change it later on. Chances are you will not have time to do so.
One benefit that you guys will have is that you can use the map that we traced. That will save you a lot of tedious work.
This was also mentioned in the Slideshow Pro Process video, but if you can figure out how to dynamically link the XML it will save you a lot of time. We had to make a SWF file for each project in each city.
You can also use the structure that we created. When you zoom in, you can talk about certain areas and show more information. You can look at our map from last year, as well as Christine Poh's map from the year before us for precedence and ideas.