Digital Switchers and Summer Plans

Digital switcher with multiple camera views

Well, another semester is over and it’s summer for MPTC students. I had a pretty memorable classes for our last week. We filmed a mock multi-camera live production in my Video-Sound Editing class using a digital switcher. The event was tabletop paper football game played by the students in my class. We even had a designated commentator giving play-by-plays. We used three cameras to capture the action from different angles. I took a turn at the digital switcher. It’s a device that lets you view all three cameras and choose which shot will be used. You can edit footage on the fly as you’re filming. It’s like those behind-the-scenes of live TV you may have seen (but on a much smaller scale).

Later on, we learned how to edit footage from multiple cameras on our computers. This is another way you can edit multi-camera footage. We had to sync the footage together. Much like the digital switcher, we could play all the videos at once and edit on the fly by choosing what shot we wanted to use.

Also during the last class we watched everybody’s green screen productions. They were great and really fun to watch. One group “teleported” themselves to different places. They even figured out how to create an effect that made them look like the zapped out of the space they were standing in. After class, my group and I celebrated a job well done by going out for ice cream. I will miss seeing them every week while we are on summer break.

Speaking of summer break, I’m really not getting a break this summer. I’ll be working overtime at my job. I’m also working on some side projects. I’ll be making videos for a gaming community that raises money for children’s hospitals. I’m in the process of making a video for them now using kinetic typography in Adobe After Effects. It’s a challenge, but it’s one of the coolest things I’ve made on my own so far.

How will you be spending your summer break?