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styles and techniques. You should always be looking for ways to make live shots look like they are live. For live-for-the-sake-of-live situations, this might not be easy. Try to include some action indicative of the time of day, such as a setting sun, rush-hour traffic, or maybe totally empty streets if it is for the late news.

The weather and sports segments are other exam- ples of this type of live TV. With these two segments, it is possible to be more creative and possibly practice handholding the camera during live shots. The sports segment might come from a pregame warm-up, in which the sports anchor walks around among the play- ers asking how their spirits are. The weather segment might be from a cultural fair where the weatherperson walks to a few booths to sample food before giving the weather. Maybe these situations aren’t hard news, but they are chances to hone some skills that can come in handy at another time.

Electronic Field Production

More and more non-news productions are being done live. From the early days of teleconferencing to the ex- panding use of TV on the Internet, live television is becoming a common way to communicate. Stodgy studio teleconferences are giving way to individual managers doing their segments live from the plant floor or inside a research lab. Viewers from all over the country can ask questions of the manager and key workers as they work. Live TV for corporate, business, and educational use continues to increase. Video ar- raignments take place in courthouses so that prisoners do not have to leave jail to go downtown. Instructional classes are sent live to remote classrooms so that two campuses can be served by one teacher. These are just two examples of two-way, interactive, live EFP. The possibilities are endless.

What Can Go Wrong?

At almost every step of the process of portable video production, problems can occur and cause delays, re- sulting in shots missed, time wasted, and money lost. When something goes wrong on a live shot from the field, a newscast can become chaotic. Understanding

the basic elements of live production can at least re- duce the chances of something going wrong, and at best can provide you with a backup plan when the in- evitable happens.

Know the System

Live TV has the most pressure of any form of this business. It is also the time when the most things usu- ally go wrong: the station does not have your picture or audio; the talent cannot hear the cues; or the signal is full of breakup. The easiest way to deal with any of these problems is to know how the system works. If you work with a live truck (microwave or satellite), you must know the elements that make up the system and the order in which they are connected. You should be able to trace the signal from the camera to the antenna through every tiny part of the truck. If the receiver gets the color bars from the truck but not the picture from the camera, then you know the prob- lem is not with the transmitter. You should have a checklist for the entire system within the van. The color bar generator-switcher, waveform monitor, tone generator-audio mixer, transmitter, power amp, and TV monitor are all clues to where any problem can be. If color bars are okay at the other end, and your waveform says that the video is correct, then any problem might be at the other end and not with you. The last resort is to bypass everything in the truck and put the video and audio directly into the transmitter (note that transmitters usually require line-level au- dio, so the mic will likely still have to run through a mixer). By eliminating possibilities, you can narrow any problem down to the piece of equipment or sec- tion of the truck. (See Figure 2-14.)

Power in the Truck

All live trucks have a gas-powered generator to supply electricity to the video-audio racks and the transmit- ter. Larger generators can also provide enough power for lights as well; many are as strong as 20 amps for outside use (called tech power). A backup system, and sometimes the main system of power in small vans, is an inverter that runs off the truck’s engine. This small device converts the DC power from the engine’s alter- nator and turns it into AC power for use in the rack.

36 Chapter 2: Part Two: Live Coverage

Most large vans actually run all equipment off a bat- tery system that is continually charged by the genera- tor. In case of generator failure, this battery system can allow you to keep transmitting for a short period of time if the power load is kept to a minimum. Make

sure you understand the power system in the truck and know what to do if any one element fails.

Lighting

If the live shot is indoors, the lighting will be similar to that used for most stand-ups. Time, of course, is al- ways a factor in how fancy you can get and how many lights you can set up. One consideration in doing live shots is matching the studio style of lighting. While in some cases you might do a stand-up in available light to make it fit with the rest of the story, a live shot should match more to the studio than to the story it introduces, when possible. That means a high-key flat style with little shadow or modeling detail. You must also take into account any guests who might be inter- viewed and the light level of the background. It would look silly to have the reporter brightly lit and the back- ground almost black by comparison, although that is often the case when only one light is used. (See Figure 2-15.) Try always to set the light up on a stand and not on top of the camera, unless the camera must be panned beyond the range of the stand light.

Figure 2-14 In a remote setup like the inside of this pro- duction van, a live operator must know how all the equip- ment works; troubleshooting is part of the daily routine.

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