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News Latest News First there was three, then there was one
News Latest News First there was three, then there was one
| First there was three, then there was one |
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| Written by Russ Speiser | |||||
| Tuesday, 29 April 2008 18:30 | |||||
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A new studio, a new production team, and some new partnership possibilities.  In April we had the privilege of being involved in one of the first major productions of a new studio that has just started up in the Paris area. They are just starting production themselves, and the team is going through the usual startup challenges of learning to use new equipment and programs. The agreement for this first time was that we would work together on the design for the decor that the studio would put together with CNA footing the bill. On the other hand, for the week of production itself, we would combine people from their team with Marj and I. There were a number of challenges and problems to be overcome, seemingly right from the beginning. The schedule to design and build the decor was very tight, the budget was not overly generous, and as we didn't know each other that well yet, we needed to be careful with our communication. A couple of weeks before the production, one of the people who was supposed to be a presenter called to say he couldn't make it, which cut the number of people in front of the camera from three to two, and also reduced the dynamics of the discussion and was more than a little disappointing to us. The program that we recorded was a series of teachings on various topics from the Bible, all in Arabic. We wanted something that looked relatively modern, yet still had some touches of North Africa. The plan was to have three people discussing and teaching together, probably with Ali Arhab moderating or directing the discussion.  The initial mockup of the decor (at left) already looked quite interesting, with a nice rounded table and an "edgeless" wall that would be painted white to make it look like the whole set was sort of floating in whiteness. It turns out it is very difficult to find carpenters in the Paris area that can do custom work like this for a reasonable price and without several months of advance notice. There were more than a few tense moments when it looked like what we had picked wasn't going to be possible. The end product (on the right above) looked great, very close to the mockup, although it took a day longer than we had allowed for, and actually there was painting going on just minutes before we pushed the "record" button. Just days before we were all to meet at the studio for final preparations, I was informed that when Ali contacted  the second presenter to give him last minute details of when and where to meet exactly, he said he would be unable to take part because he didn't get confirmation and so had not booked holidays for this week and couldn't leave. This was very disappointing since it meant that Ali would be the only one doing all the teaching for the entire week! As well, Ali had been particularly busy in the weeks leading up to the production, was quite tired, and all along had been counting on this man to pull the majority of the teaching load, which would now obviously not be possible. So we went from three people having an interesting discussion, to two people sharing a topic, to one person teaching for 25 individual episodes. For a few hours we considered cancelling, but then realized that with all the effort and the scheduling difficulties, there was no way we could, so we committed the whole project to the Lord again and continued. The day before, we met at the studio to finalize the lighting, and verify the camera positions, workflows and audio. We also met the team that would be helping us; besides the set construction there was someone in charge of the lighting, and an audio technician. The only person who wasn't present that afternoon was someone who was scheduled to come and be the floor manager; the person who directs things in the studio. Unfortunately, as we were making the last few adjustments, he too called and said he wouldn't be able to make it, but by this point I was used to this sort of thing and it didn't bother us. We eventually found someone else at the studio who was willing to do this job.  The reason the floor manager was important was because there was only one person in front of the camera, but we had several cameras; if you have several people on the set, you can film them talking to each other, but when there is only one person, he or she needs to ALWAYS be looking at the camera to be making contact with the people watching. If it's just a short news show, like on CNN, they generally just use one camera and the person reads off the teleprompter, however our teaching segments were going to be 30 mins long, so to keep it at least a little interesting we were going to need to switch cameras. The floor managers job was to indicate to Ali to which camera he should be looking. This allowed him to shift his gaze to the camera that was going live and make the whole production look natural.It was our first experience working together as a team and it went very well. Everyone got along, and although the work was intense, we also had fun together. As this was a relatively new installation, we found several little "bugs" with the equipment. One "bug" that was bigger than the others was that the ventilation system for the studio was not acoustically silent, and was not efficient enough. This meant that we were never able to get any ventilation that would allow the studio to cool down. Even opening all the doors to the outside in between every segment didn't cool things down enough, and caused Ali to lose energy even more than normal. The good news is this problem had already been identified; the bad news is that is was only scheduled to be fixed until the week AFTER we were finished. In the end, we were able to complete about 80% of our production goals for the week, and sometime in the not  too distant future, these episodes will be watched by people around the world and will serve to disciple and educate believers who in many cases have very little other contact with Biblical teaching than what they can receive from satellite TV programs.One of the purposes of this production was to serve as a kind of trial to evaluate the possibilities of our partnering together in the future. We still need to have a formal evaluation time, but we feel very positive about this experience and hope to be involved with them in the future. We've already been involved in training some of the personnel at the studio in both video and audio production techniques, and there are good possibilities for the future as well. Thanks for your prayers and support that make this kind of work possible! Russ
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