ATXedition Production Process

BETA VERSION 1.1
Nov. 7, 2008

Objective

ATXedition is a digital storytelling project.

The objective is to produce stories that can be: [1] posted to the ATXedition.TV web site, [2] packaged and cablecast on channelAustin’s access channels (10, 11, and 16), and [3] made available as audio-only versions for radio and audio podcasts. The stories will also be distributed in print.

Since the objective is to create media for multiple platforms, careful attention must be paid throughout the entire process to ensure that the video that is shot works both for TV and for the web, and that the soundtrack works by itself as an audio-only product.

Pre-Production

Find a story

You have some latitude in deciding what makes an ATXedition story. The ATXedition Mission is a useful guide, and so are existing stories posted to ATXedition.TV. Focusing on “anything uniquely Austin” and on its “people, places, and happenings” can cover a wide range of subjects. Having said that, the stories should have significance and value, and should illustrate the tapestry that demonstrates what makes Austin – Austin.

There are a lot of sources for story ideas. If you want to produce a story about an Austin neighborhood, for example, you can look for ideas/events on the many web sites of Austin neighborhood associations linked here: www.ancweb.org/na_links.htm
The City’s web site has links to a Community Registry where you can enter a zip code and get a list of neighborhood associations and other organizations: www.ci.austin.tx.us/neighbor/

Many event listings can be found in the Austin Chronicle calendar and online: www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Calendar/index
The front page of the City’s web site regularly links to Austin happenings: www.ci.austin.tx.us/

These are a few examples of where to look for stories. A complete list of resources for finding ATXedition story ideas is beyond the scope of this document.

Arrange an interview – find a storyteller

Once you’ve identified a subject for your ATXedition story, you need to find out who would be a good spokesperson or storyteller. There are several approaches you can take. They have their advantages and disadvantages.

One approach is to show up to an event and randomly ask a person to talk on camera. This can be good for the “person-on-the-street” type interview, where you will get impromptu remarks or commentary. In some cases this can make for good video, but it can also lead to less then desirable results.

A more structured approach is to do a little research (i.e. make a call or check a web site) to find out if there is a particular person with knowledge or background information related to your story. This way you can target in advance who you want to interview and perhaps even do some pre-interview work that will help when you are actually in the field. A down-side to this approach is that it can eliminate the spontaneity and randomness of the looser style.

Ideally, you’ll get more than one perspective. Having more than one voice in your final piece can make for a more interesting and compelling story. But it can also be harder in the editing process to boil down several interviews into a 3 minute long segment.

Here’s an example.

Suppose you look in the Austin Chronicle calendar and decide to do an ATXedition story on the Dia de Los Muertos Process & Party hosted by Mexic-Arte Museum. The thing to do is to call the museum, identify yourself as someone producing an ATXedition story for channelAustin (explaining what that means), and ask if there is someone who would be willing to talk on camera about the parade. You might get the director of Mexic-Arte to be on camera as well as some random person participating in or watching the procession.

Production

Establish the shot - shoot for the web

This document assumes that you already know how to operate a digital video camera and how to establish a shot. When using channelAustin gear to produce an ATXedition.TV story, we recommend that you shoot using an HDV camera and that whenever possible you use a tripod. For audio, a shotgun mic is fine while capturing illustrative footage. For interviews, you can use a handheld mic or a lavalier mic. A handheld mic is easier to use in the field.

You will shoot for the television AND for the web at the same time. Shooting for the web means realizing that your end product must be viewable on a small screen and that it will be compressed. In practical terms, these means that you should:
• Shoot everything tighter
• Minimize camera movement and do not make excessive or quick pans, zooms, etc (i.e. use a tripod)
• Keep the background simple
• Pay attention to light

If you do a Google search on how to shoot video for the web, you’ll come up with a lot of hits. Here are some sample sites with tips shooting for the web:

www.mindymcadams.com/tojou/2008/how-to-shoot-video-interviews/
www.cvmcmedia.com.au/howto/ht-4.htm
www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/video/

The ATXedition stories may be shot by one person, but it is better if there is one person operating the camera while another person conducts the interview.

Conduct interviews

ATXedition stories are structured around the interview. However, it is the type of interview where you – the person conducting the interview – are not in the frame and your voice is not in the final edited piece.

For these stories we want the subject who is speaking to begin by saying their name and where they are from (organization, neighborhood, school, performance group, etc.).

“My name is Stefan Wray. I’m the Communications Director at channelAustin and I’m standing in front of City Hall where the Austin Lounge Lizards are performing . . .”

So to put the subject at ease with the easiest question of all, you’ll first ask the person you’re interviewing to make that type of statement.

The direction of your interview can vary greatly depending on your story. Generally, though, you will be asking some version of the basic who-what-where-when-why type questions: Who are you? What are you doing? Where are you located? Why are you doing this?

Some people will be natural-born interview subjects. For them, you’ll be able to easily prompt them and they’ll be able to speak intelligently about whatever it is they’re doing. For others, you’ll need to pry information out of them. One of the most important aspects of an interview, is to listen. Your subject may not answer a question as you anticipated; however, he/she may say something that leads the story in an entirely new direction that is much more interesting.

A few tips on conducting interviews are:

• Conduct your interview where there is not a lot of background noise – if the sounds continue, move the interview
• Prep the person you’re speaking with before you begin by explaining what ATXedition is and what your expectations are
• Coach the person you’re speaking with to answer in complete sentences, but to feel free to stop when they have explained.

Some folks continue speaking because they are nervous or feel you want them to say more. Please assure them this is not necessary.

• Coach that person to put your question into their answer. For example: Why do you like listening to music? I like listening to music because ...
• Do not ask yes or no questions. Unfortunately most people will answer with one word. Instead of saying “Do you like Austin music?”, ask “Why do you like Austin music?”
• Maintain eye contact with your subject at all times and encourage and put them at ease with a nod of your head, a smile, etc. (with you standing next to the camera)

Some online resources on conducting interviews are here:

www.expertvillage.com/video/130957_conducting-interviews-getting-sound-b...

www.videomaker.com/article/12551/

www.dvworkshops.com/newsletters/docinterview.html

Shoot illustrative footage

You’ll need to shoot illustrative footage or b-roll so that you don’t end up with just a talking head. The type and amount of illustrative footage depends on your story, but it’s better to err on the side of having too much to work with in post-production, than not enough.

It can be better to shoot your illustrative footage after the interview, so you will know how best to use video to portray what has been said in the interview

Get take aways

There are several pieces of information that you should take away from each shoot and interview. They include:

• Correct spelling of people’s names and / or organizations or associations
• Accurate contact information for the story and for the interviewee
• Web site addresses
• Physical address (to geocode the video on the web site)
• Notes so you can write a description to post with the video on ATXedition.TV

Post-Production

Edit short pieces

Once again, the goal is to produce 3 to 5 minute segments, with the preference being on shorter pieces. You are also editing for multiple platforms. Your finished product must work on television and the web, as well as stand-alone as audio.

This document assumes that you know how to use Final Cut Pro, Avid, Premiere, or another type of non-linear editing software.
The best approach is to organize your editing in the following phases.

First edit for the narrative flow of the piece. If you have a 6-minute interview with one person, then you need to figure out what to cut and what to use. If you have more than one person, then you need to determine how you will weave together these different voices into a coherent segment. If any of the illustrative footage you shot comes with useful natural sound, you can use this at the beginning and end, or for transitions.

Once the narrative structure has been laid out, then you can overlay other footage where appropriate. When you think you’re finished, listen to it without watching the video to see if makes sense as a stand-alone audio piece.

Go beyond basic editing

Although not always necessary, there may be instances when you want to send your Final Cut Pro sequence to Soundtrack Pro in order to enhance the audio. For example, you may want to normalize the audio or you may want to use an EQ effect to raise the mid range frequencies to make the voices more prominent. Or you may want to do a better mix of the recorded ambient sounds with your interview narrative.

Create fades, captions, and titles

The edited piece should fade in from black and out to black. How you use cross fades or other video transitions and effects within the segment is up to you. Please keep these to a minimum because dissolves do not translate well on the web.

Titles should be short – three words or so – and should be descriptive of the story.

The best captions appear in the lower third of the screen with the person’s name on the first line and their identifier on the second line.

Always use the font Helvetica Neue for titles. The name should appear in white, with the atx “blue” as a drop shadow. The second line should be in blue with an orange drop shadow.

Write a description

The description should be a short text version of your ATXedition story, between 50 and 100 words. It will be posted on the ATXedition.TV web site along with the video. It has several purposes. One is to provide anyone browsing the site with information on the video. Its most important function, though, is for search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, etc.). Video files do not mean anything to search engines. So anytime a video file is posted to a web site it needs to be accompanied with text.
The best description is going to include people names, place names, event names, and other words or phrases that will also become key words or tags.

Here’s an example:

Pat Cadam, of Green Gears in San Francisco, visited Austin Community College’s automotive department at the Riverside campus on Oct. 15, 2008 to demonstrate how to convert an existing Toyota Prius into an even more advanced battery operated car. Cadam was also in Austin to attend the Austin Alt Car Expo at the Palmer Center, hosted by Austin Energy.

Make list of tags

If you’ve written your description well, then it’s easy to extract a list of tags or keywords. The keywords are also important to search engines. Both the description and tags appear in the head of web pages and as a listed part of the meta data. Keywords are written as a list of comma -- separated words.

Here’s an example of tags or keywords extracted from the above description:
pat cadam, green gears, san francisco, austin community college, automotive department, toyota prius, alt car expo, palmer center, austin energy

Export Files

Export a .mov file

If using Final Cut Pro, then follow the normal procedure for exporting your sequence as a QuickTime .mov file. Go to File, Export, QuickTime Movie... etc. Save the file using the title of the story for the file name:

theelectriccar.mov

This document assumes that if you’re using another non-linear editing software, that you know how to create a .mov with it.
Your ATXedition .mov file is packaged with other ATXedition stories to run as a half hour ATXedition program on the access channels (TRT 28:30).

Export a .jpg file

When your ATXedition video is posted to the web site, a still image or “thumbnail” will also be posted. For this you need to scroll through your edited video in the Final Cut Pro sequence and find a still image that you think works best for this thumbnail.

Once you’ve found an image you like in the timeline, then go to:
- File, Export, Using QuickTime Conversion… When you see the pop-up window, at the bottom of that window there will be an option to:
- change Format. Change the Format to Still Image. Then click on
- Options… Then change the Format to:
- JPEG. You can leave the settings at default. Then save the file:
- using the title of the story in the file name (with no spaces in the file):

theelectriccar.jpg

Export an audio file

Note: This part still needs to be written. The original intention of this project was to produce audio files for broadcast on radio. This could be either as an aiff format or mp3 format. We need to consult with people involved with radio to develop specifications for this. We also need to find radio partners who are will to broadcast these stories.

Export a .mp4 file

There is an excellent website with an online tutorial that explains the process and best settings for exporting your ATXedition video to the .mp4 format. It’s called freevlog at www.freevlog.org. The tutorial is at:

http://www.freevlog.org/vlog/index.php/2006/12/13/screencast-h264-ipod-c...

In Final Cut Pro, click within the Sequence and then go to:
- File, Export, Using QuickTime Conversion… At the bottom of the pop-up window, change the Format to:
- MPEG-4. Then click on Options. Another pop-up window will appear title MPEG-4 Export Settings.

You will make several modifications to the MPEG-4 Export Settings. First:
- change the File Format from MP4 (ISMA) to MP4. Then:
- change the Video Format to H.264. Then:
- change the data rate to 600 kbits/sec. Leave the image size at 320 x 240.
- Change the Frame Rate to 15. Leave Key Frames at 24Then click on Video Options… Turn Main off and click on:
- Baseline. Change Encoding Mode to:
- Best Quality (Multi-pass). Click OK.

Back on the MPEG-4 Export Settings window, change Optimized for -- to Streaming.- Then click on Audio to modify these settings.

Keep the Audio Format at AAC.
- Change the Data Rate to 32 kbps.
- Change the channels from Stereo to Mono.
- Change the Output Sample Rate to 32 kHz. Click OK.

Then save your file with the title as the file name:

theelectriccar.mp4

Distribution

ATXedition on television

This procedure and workflow still needs to be developed.

ATXedition on radio and audio podcasts

This procedure and workflow still needs to be developed.

Post ATXedition video on blip.tv

NOTE: These are instructions for our staff. We will recommend a process for others.

Once an .mp4 file and a .jpg file have been exported, and once a description and list of keywords have been written, then the first step to getting ATXedition stories on the web is to post the files to blip.tv.

channelAustin is posting all of its online ATXedition stories here: atxedition.blip.tv

This site requires a username and password to login and begin the upload process.

Once you login to the site, click on Upload. There you will find a form with fields where you will enter the Title and Description, and upload the .mp4 and .jpg.

You will also designate which Creative Commons license to give the work. We have been using Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial - NoDerivs

There is a section called Categorize that you need to open. This is where you enter your keywords and set the content rating.

The form is fairly easy to follow.

After you’ve posted your files, then you need to wait for blip.tv to convert the .mp4 to a .flv (Flash) file. For the size of these files, this doesn’t take very long.

Click on Dashboard and you’ll see a list of files that includes the one you’ve just posted, as well as the previous posts in reverse order.

If you’re using a Firefox browser (recommended) then when you scroll over the title of your story with your mouse you’ll see its file location in the bottom left corner, such as:
http://blip.tv/file/1386872

Otherwise, just click on the story link and open up file, noting the file path.

Link blip.tv video to ATXedition.TV

After an ATXedition story has been uploaded and converted to an .flv file at atxedition.blip.tv, then that file can be linked to from ATXedition.TV

This site also requires a username and password to login and begin the process.

Once logged in, the procedure is to create a new blog page and to enter form fields for Title, Description, Video (link to blip.tv), and Keywords.

ATXedition.TV is a channelAustin project in development.