Cinecast Idea

[bones]

Here’s an idea: Try a multi-window Cinecast viewing experience with some/all corps next year. As you watch in the theater, the screen would be broken into 4 sections. You’d have a main screen that took up most of the real estate, with three small boxes across the bottom of the screen. All run in sync, but all show different views of the performance. (Kind of like that movie Timecode.)

The main screen would show multi-cam views, but 80-90% of the shots would be high-cam (full-corps) view or mid-level (ensemble) camera views.

The three small boxes at bottom would showcase:

(1) 100% percussion ensemble,

(2) 100% color guard ensemble, and

(3) 100% soloists/performer close-ups/DM/etc.

This way, during a drum solo, you could watch the drill in the larger screen while watching the battery/pit in the smaller box at the bottom. You could watch Carmen/GeneKelly/Hollyx4 to your heart’s content in the soloist/performer close-up window while catching the rest of the corps on the bigger view.

You wouldn’t lose much of the experience on the larger part of the screen because most of the hi-cam views have large swaths of the front & back stands at the top and bottom of the picture anyway. So there’s no lost picture on the high-cam shots as long as the camera person lines up the shot correctly . Mid-level shots would lose some, but not much, of the picture.

The director would need co-directors who are responsible for calling camera shots for each of the smaller views. And of course, you’d need real time processing to mix these together before pumping them out to the satellite (but that's been done in previous broadcasts, albeit w/ only 1 soloist window).

Total cameras required probably wouldn’t be anything in excess of what they have now because the DVD has percussion-only and colorguard-only camera views already.

The screen might end up being a bit too frenetic with all the camera views. But if you had a problem, you could slouch down in your seat so the head of the person in front of you blocked the bottom camera views. :)

Thoughts?

[Henson]

IMO a better alternative (DVD producers listen up :) ) would be to show brief periods of 'solo moments' and then collapse them into a small picture-in-picture box in the corner while focusing on a larger segment of the show. Of course then we'll get to complain that the PIP box covered up the best part of the drill, but it's better than what we have now...look at the cinecast of the Cadets for instance: 2 minutes of guard and pit, 1 minute of cool drill, and 8 minutes of the cameras following confused girls running around the field not really doing anything interesting. Those 'girl' moments could have been banished to the corner where we would still see what they were doing, but also see the really cool moments built into that drill.

[sardomus]

IMO a better alternative (DVD producers listen up  :)  )  would be to show brief periods of 'solo moments' and then collapse them into a small picture-in-picture box in the corner while focusing on a larger segment of the show.  Of course then we'll get to complain that the PIP box covered up the best part of the drill, but it's better than what we have now...look at the cinecast of the Cadets for instance: 2 minutes of guard and pit, 1 minute of cool drill, and 8 minutes of the cameras following confused girls running around the field not really doing anything interesting.  Those 'girl' moments could have been banished to the corner where we would still see what they were doing, but also see the really cool moments built into that drill.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I remember that being done once... SCV 1988 or 89 (one of the Phantom of the Opera shows), during the Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again solo (OMG I'm getting old).

Perhaps it's been done since? I don't remember.

Edited August 13, 2005 by sardomus

[SFsmack]

I think there was too much time spent on individual performers in general... I mean, how many times do we need to see where the mic'd voice is coming from? (I am NOT complaining about mic'd voice....I just don't wanna see them when it comes to the video performance.) There was so much visual stuff I missed last night. I was pretty fired up about it. They seem to have done a better job with the Cavaliers and Cadets and at the end, but a couple of the shows were just close-ups all around. I missed some cool visual moments of the Bluecoats...for example, during the drumspeak/percussion soli.

SMM