Multi-Camera Technique – Assignment 1

Multi-Camera Technique – Assignment 1

Practical/Aesthetic reasons

What is a multi camera setup?
A multi-camera setup is not distinctively hard to guess because it is in the name "multi" Multi means multiple therefor its multiple camera's. According to Steves-Digicams here are 5 tips to multi cam shooting:

• Film from only one side. Multiple camera placed on opposite sides of the action will confuse the views. For instance, if you cover a basketball game from two opposite sides of the court, one camera will show that the action is moving from left to right while the other will show the action towards the opposite direction.
• Include a crossing shot to show change in view. If you wish to film from the other side, you must show one shot where the camera crosses this imaginary line. This is a more direct way of orienting the view on the change of view.
• Use a buffer shot to indicate a change of view. Instead of panning, multiple cameras shoot the same action from at least three sides: the left side, right side, and the front or back. The shots are cut and placed one after another to show the view of the scene moving from one side to another.
• Use different shots of the same scene. You can still have different shots even if they are all taken from just one side. Zooming in on different aspects of the action from the same side will provide additional views. Using the same basketball game as an example, one may have a wide shot covering the entire stadium, a medium shot showing the action between the players and another showing the reaction of the audience.
• Film from different sides only to show discontinuity. In some cases, breaking the 180 degree rule is needed to achieve a stronger effect. Some filmmakers take shots showing the left and right side of the same subject to induce a dramatic change in the subject's character or emotion.

Equipment needed/Roles
Equipment can vary for a multi cam shoot, oftenly you would use several camera's, these camera's can always vary but it is recommended to have the same camera's as the codec is the same and the quality will deem itself the same when it comes to the export. Lighting is an important piece of equipment, lighting can spice up the picture but could also make the picture dull. Audio is key to a superb shoot because if you don't have any audio but amazing clips they would be useless, however a way to get around that is having it scripted so they could redo the audio in studio.

TV News
TV News usually sticks with the same concept, formal attire, camera to the side, camera to the front, and camera prepared in other areas such as the weather person. But mostly it will be focused on the presenter who will give the daily dosage of news.

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To show that this is how multi cam works the below and above images are two of the different angles they use during a News report, as you can see one directly in front of the woman and one to the side. It can become handy to the audience having the side shot they normally use it to display possible a clip with the framing set to have the presenter at the side.

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Live Sports
Elaborating on sports you genuinely don't "need" multiple camera's but it does come in more intriguing and appealing to the audience as you can have a camera dedicated to the entire game, meaning it see's everything usually at the top of the stadium looking down onto the players to catch everything. But another camera will be up close and personal to capture specific moment of the players, say if they scored a goal you will find most athletes will have it replayed up close, this is what I mean by up close.

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In sports shooting they consistently use a shot called the safeshot, it is displayed as the first image. The safeshot is a wide angle of the event to catch everything, it can also be used as a backup if the close up shot(second image) has technical problems or didnt catch anything in time. And then the mid shots which stay directly in the middle(third image) and capture everything possible.

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Above is the shot that will constantly be used in the event, it will be cut back to mostly after the close up camera has finished its interesting summary of something. Most of the camera's here but as you can see above to the right of the image the white camera is a phantom, it specializes in higher fps shots which you will find is used variously throughout an event. There are roughly 4-5 camera's used in any professional sports event.

TV Studio Sitcom
TV Studio sitcoms are extremely common in this day and age because it can help the audience and live the show up a bit. But how is a studio sitcom a multicam you ask? Typically there will be 2-3 camera's that will consistently be used throughout a scene. If you look at the image below of "friends" you can see a camera to the left and 2 camera's to the right. What's going on in this scene is one camera is focusing on the conversation Chandler and Joey are having. Another camera is focusing on whats going on in the background(To the left when they're celebrating the child's birthday) And finally one camera to the corner that looks overall at the entire scene, displaying the conversation of Joey and chandler but also showing the background. However that is just one tactic of 2. The camera to the far right could be focusing on joey's face to show his emotions. the right camera could be looking at the far left of the scene focusing on Ross. The left camera could be a summary of that left half of the scene without Joey and Chandler in it. Then there would be another camera to the far left showing Chandler's face to show his emotions.

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Game Shows

Game shows always use multi-cam because no matter what you can't capture all the good content on one camera, well technically you could but it wouldn't be the same.

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Celebrity Juice uses roughly 5-7 camera's in each shoot. One focused on the left panel, one the right, one the middle, one overall, one to the far left where a skit is usually performed, one a close up of the skit, and one to the right where a guest appearance is sometimes made. 

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An interesting thing about Celebrity juice is the introduction, there is technically two introductions, the performance of Keith Lemon's entrance at the beginning where he is at the top with the audience, the logo comes in, he kicks it out the way and the camera pans around him and stays stationary looking focusing on him. There is an intro before hand which you can see in the video below, the first minute is all the camera work you can see.

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If you would like to see more information on the camera setup and how many are used during celebrity juice please click here.

Pros/Cons
Pros:

• Once the content is figured out and the camera's are setup correctly with a scheduele, alongside the working roles performed correctly you could be churning out episodes and good content.
• Using multi-cam can show it all, it can focus on little and big points getting the max amount of coverage.
• Continuity is always kept and keeps the video entertaining.
• Editing can mostly be covered in the production stage which can speed up the production.
• You don't need to have different equipment for different shows unless it depends heavily on something specific.

Cons:

• The cost can be high due to the excessive camera use.
• Lighting has to be controlled carefully and strictly due to different camera's at different angles.
• The timing of all the footage has to be precise and maintained otherwise one little "cock-up" could mess the entire production.
• The creativity can be limited as it progresses through because its the shame shots over and over and it really rely's on the actors and editors to make it appealing.

The camera setup to multi-cam
To elaborate more on the actual camera setup, its an arc shape. I have described the uses above of how the camera setupd would be played out but it is always an arc shape. They may be placed differently but there is a line you can go over because it could affect the lighting, or even get caught in one of the camera's shots. The picture below illustrates what I am explaining. 

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Critical Approaches AS1

Critical Approaches

Why we use audience research
The reason why we use audience research is so that a media product(film, magazine, TV show etc.) can get its worth and profit by targeting specific audiences. You wouldn't want to create a product that wouldn't appeal to any audiences plus you can't really create a product if you don't know what audience you want it to be for or what's the point of even creating the product? Usually marketing will be what makes an ideal audience for shows and films through trailers and posters. Using a poster, trailer or some sort of advert to promote the product, even merchandise will appeal, it will create a bigger audience, say the poster we see that on a wall somewhere and we like the concept of it so we then look online possibly at the trailer and then it hooks us in to want to watch the actual film and occasionally buy some merchandise. It's worth researching an audience because we can understand what content they want and what will make us profit the most as well as keeping the audience entertained at the same time.

How is it used?
How on earth do we research an audience? Well there are hundreds of different ways; surveys, questionnaires, going up to the public and seeing what they like, forums, and so many more. How do we use it? Target audience profiling. In a nut shell a target audience profile is a summary of all your findings, its like combining them all into one file to get a more accurate and concentrated view of your audience in higher detail. Profiling can be created in many different ways such as listing or mind maps or other visual aspects. Audience profiling is as listed below.

Audience profiling:
Socio-economic status
Socio-economic status in simple terminology is the technique of measuring the wealth of an audience with three different classes; upper class, middle class, and working class. This list goes in order according highest to lowest. Upper is obviously the wealthiest because it is the highest class, middle is at a normal moderate standing, and working class is the usual low pay dead-end jobs. How does this effect target audience you ask? Well take a film like fast and furious, that would have all sorts of sponsorships from different car brands, say if you were to create a documentary about supercars then that would aim more to the upper class because of its price, it can target middle and working class because everyone has dreams of course. Conveniently the UK apparently has the most excessive use of TV's, this is according to BARB that "96-97% of the UK population owns a TV." This is pretty much the entirety of the UK so if you were to produce anything you would want to aim for the audience that's greatly populated.

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Psychographics
Psychographics is one of two main audience profiling techniques its looking more into the interests of the audience, what the audience would like to see, what they suggest etc. Studying the personality, opinions, attitudes and interests is what Psychographics. In summary its studying the audience lifestyle and hobbies and how they find fulfilment in what what they have paid for, getting their moneys worth. When profiling Psychographics we use these different sections to break down the profiling:
- Explorer's
- Struggler's
- Reformer's
- Aspsirer's
- Resigned
- Mainstreamer's
- Succeeder's

Explorers are defined within the name really, they explore, discover, they are individuals that seek new things and like a bit of adventure, its focused more on the "wild side" as you may know there are a variety different adverts on TV mostly adventurous ones, also outdoor adverts. That promote equipment and other essentials such as tents, outdoor lighting, etc.
Strugglers are people that feel trapped, almost alienated. Oftenly they would seem as though they are the more lowlife typical types of people you find in densely populated areas, not really a great example but stereotypically the lower streets of say Middlesbrough, the places with flats and overly populated people who stay on minimum wage and just make enough to get on in life, possibly take out loans. Loan adverts would be advisable to this audience.
Reformers are the type of people who look for freedom, similar to explorers they feel the need to get by individually without restrictions. They are the more independent people/companies. Reformers look more towards the usual groups, the middle class.

Aspirer's are probably the highest of all the sections, or at least they intend to aim for the higher class of the audience, the richer better off audience. The audience for high class as said recently was the people who aim for supercars, adverts will be promoted for supercars and famous brands etc. these will appeal to the Aspirer's the people who want to spend a bit of cash.
Resigned are the casual audience, they're the survivalists however sometimes rebelling towards authoritative figures, you might sum this audience up as the typical teens, obviously their welbeing is different towards the adult audiences because the income and outcome is different.
Mainstreamers are the normal sheep of the crowd, go for big brands but also the smaller brands, oftenly a media company will advertise to mainstreamers because this audience is the average yet more dedicated audience.
Succeeders are the ones inspired to become the top dog, they wish for control, they pursue to be professional and stride in directions which makes them confident and more dominant the products aimed at this audience will be the most professional as can be, but obviously more costly.

Geodemographics
Geodemographics is more regional than demographics, demographics looks at age, gender, sexual orientation, whereas geodemographics looks at the regional identity of the person, this could be done by the accordance to where they are located. Geography as well all know is about locations all over the world which is why its called geodemographics.

Regional Identity and geodemographics are pretty much the exact same as one another, it focuses on the region or location that the audience is living in, geodemographics however adds a more detailed view of the audience by pinpointing certain factors such as the research data, income, outcome, etc. When its said to be "regional" its focusing on regions obviously, but that doesn't essentially mean worldwide it could mean just one country, or even a town/county it varies depending on the audience, but eventually all data will come as one and into a summarised profile that pinpoints the main points of regions and the audience inside those regions.

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The picture above is a great but inaccurate example because the date on it is 2008 as you can see, but this gives you a rough idea of looking at rough regional identity. To understand this easier, the colour coding to the bottom right of the picture is how the map goes, the lightest colours are the lower unemployment rates, and the darker, the higher, so for example the top left of the the purple areas, 7-10% of people are unemployed. So when researching audience you don't really want to aim for these areas, you want to grow profit over your product so you want to aim for the places that have the least unemployment rates.

Age/Gender/Sexual Orientation
The age of the audience can always vary, could be 16, could be 78, but media products intend to aim for one specific range, mostly 15-45 but it can always change as all audiences have different tastes. Gender and age can always be similar, not enough to be the same obviously but they are two key parts to audience research and a great production. Gender specifically is unintentionally aimed in not many films. Take your common chick flicks for example those are intentionally always meant for a girl audience stereotypically. But of course a male audience can watch them there's no being bias about it however chick flicks are aimed to fulfilling a woman's emotional side. Sexual orientation could technically relate to gender because stereotypically the majority of regions in set countries are straight, however America and Britain is expanding out to promoting the different sexual orientation. In earlier times the sexual orientation research would have been simple because stricter less open, and forgiving times. If you do not know what sexual orientation is then according to: Link: "A person's sexual identity in relation to the gender to which they are attracted"

Overall these three are the main components to a perfect audience profile, however regional identity would fit in this the age/gender/sexual orientation lets you focus your product to not being offensive or bias, it helps you make the most ideal product for the audience, its like saying made by the audience, for the audience.

Mainstream
Mainstream can relate back to when we talked about mainstreamers, they focus on the average things, mainstream alone means the majority. So the majority of the population in a regional area, its focusing on making sure that the content is able enough to become worldwide or hit most countries, even be as wide as possible expanding and being the new talk of the town/world. A producers job is to ensure the production will make a profit and get its money's worth or budget-worth, this is by producers slowly implementing it and shaping it into what they actually want, it can sometimes change a film entirely but it will make it profit more. You will find that all of the big companies do this, Paramount, Warner Bro's, etc. The content might not always be the best but it will spread and be wide enough, a lot of the audience believe that James Cameron's Avatar is overly used CGI and the story to it is just not worth the time but it still became one of the most profitable and worldwide films of all time and to this very day it still makes its profit from a vast variety of merchandise. Typically Star Wars is a great example for mainstream as it is constantly churning out profit even though it was made a long time ago, and sometimes the bigger companies will see that these films were still some of the biggest hits that they will try to re-create or even continue the series of films as Disney have done with Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

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Alternative
Alternative as we all know is choosing a different side to which you already had, specifically for media alternative is the use of having a specific target audience and then changing to see if another audience would be interested in it. You will find that this is only really done when a product wants to benefit more and gain more viewers, as the TV show The Big Bang Theory has had done. When it was but a small show, pretty much unheard it was aiming at the "male nerds" which is mostly teens but quite a tricky spot as the views of an audience are not so populatative when it comes to the "nerdy" stereotype. It did gain its popularity of course, but it was one of those shows that could have gone bigger with the content produced so it focused going mainstream and produced episodes that were to have all kinds of humour yet still intriguing the "nerdy" audience.

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Niche
Niche's are the less famous films, they don't seem to be the most profitable because they like to be more private and set to one area, niche is being set to a small target audience producing products is a lot easier as your research is compact down because it being a small target audience, you may know the movie Insidious is actually a good example of Niche, it didn't really appeal to many audience and not many people who are seeking horror films, simply because it did not live up to what it was intended. Of course they can always change but it took a 3rd insidious to finally make it scary, the age does come into the picture quite a bit variety wise mostly from horrors because Niche is aiming for the "easy" audience however not meeting expectations for even this small audience could plummet your entire production, it may be hard to meet their expectations but it requires less work because of how small it is. If you do not what a horror is or do not know what the latest ones are, please click here.

How producers carry out audience research

Quantitative and Qualitative Audience Research
Typically this section talks about the primary and secondary research for audiences in a media product, qualitative is the primary research and quantitative is the secondary, but why you ask? Well Qualitative is the quality and reliability of your work, you could have 500 "think" statistics and 1 "certain" statistic and instantly the 1 certain would win because qualitative is aimed for the most reliable and accurate reading. Quantity can always vary it focuses on getting multiple somewhat reliable readings. As said in the 500-1 example before the 500 would actually win now because its summing out all the various points and putting them together summing everything up.

These two researching techniques are actually extremely simple, quantitative is more the "online, quick" side of research, for example going to a computer collecting statistics and expert quotes into a portfolio, however quantitative may be the fastest but qualitative is the more accurate. Qualitative consists of going out and getting the information for yourself/themselves, say going directly to a scientist for statistics on the latest tested chimps(This is not me approving of animal cruelty its just an example.) If you are unsure to what primary and secondary research actually is please click this Link

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BARB
BARB, which may be known as the Broadcasters Audience Research Board is the source of official UK viewing figures, the viewing figures are the measurements of the viewing behaviour. BARB offers media producers specific, accurate breakdowns of the figures as it is crucial to the producer so that they can push their product in the right direction to appealing to the audience. BARB collects its research by selecting a handful of private estates and estimate its viewing pattern therefor how viewing figures are created.

The TV license benefits BARB a lot in this case because not every household might have a TV(which I doubt) but without a doubt keeps their research in keen condition and as accurate as possible. To view what content BARB provides for other producers you could view the website here or you can view an example of a rough reading from BARB here.

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RAJAR
Rajar, also known as Radio Join Audience research is the official responsibility for measuring radio audiences consisting in Britain. Since this measures a radio audience its actually helps Radio companies(mostly the BBC which is actually jointly owned) by giving producers the knowledge they may need for specific data for example the population or age, similar to regional identity it shows you where you will find most of the audiences and statistics for the consistency of them. Rajar offers a variety of content for producers and other companies but above all they are known for their databases on things like market trends and population. If you wish to find more out about RAJAR visit the website.

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focus groups/face-to-face interviews
Face-to-face interviews are self explanatory, researching with this is classed as qualitative research as its coming from a direct source and using a face to face interview in say a documentary will give the product a fact/possible statistic side to it deeming it more reliable and ethic. It can relate to taking surveys or questionairres, which are always helpful opinion wise and if you are a boss of a job needing to interview an intern then it will let you study them, see what they for potential in the job etc.
Focus groups are also deemed qualitative because its opinion based where it can relate to all types of content and products, it can be a lot more helpful as it is in a group. It's like having a group of film directors, and asking their opinions or attitudes towards a specific item or concept. Obviously it can elaborate in different directions but it gives you a rough idea of everything they think and how some thoughts can relate and others can be completely against one another.

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