Obama Lauer on NBC Today

[EFP]

Multi-camera network interviews have been the staple of my career for the past twenty years or so.

Who was responsible for the recent NBC Today Show Lauer Obama one-on-one interview? I don’t like to come on a message board and criticize people’s work but… Here we have what seems to be the most important sit-down of the month and someone totally hacked it together.

The “A” camera composure on the President wasn’t great but wasn’t really bad. I wouldn’t have said anything if the rest of the show matched. But the “B” camera on Lauer was a little miss-matched in colour and detail and the framing was totally miss-matched. Not only did the angle look a little funny compared to the “A” cam but the headroom seemed off, and the shot was either to close or too far (can’t remember) and the 4:3 safe area was butchered at times, cutting Lauer off on one side.

My real complaint is pointed at the “C” camera. First of all, I don’t know what type of cam they used but switching from “cam-A” to “cam-C” made cam-C seem like a toy straight out of a Cracker Jack box. No detail and really low chroma compared to cam-A.

When I hear certain operators claim (even at the net level) that they can match small-chip, low-sampling prosumer-cams to the big cams, I have to wonder if they truly know what they are talking about in this regard.

Cam-C was set up on a jib or some consumer track system or a microphone boom, I really don’t know but man, I haven’t seen something so amateurish looking for such high-level interview in a long time. In the first place there was no need to use cam-c so much. It really distracted from concentrating on what the President had to say. Furthermore it was wobbly, shaky with low detail and the operator had no regard for the 4:3 safe zone that NBC used for their SD center-cut feed which is still probably viewed by over 65 percent of people watching morning network news.

This sit-down reminded me of the old days of 1980 when I got my start at community cable television. Sometimes during rolling on a program, we used to practice things that may have looked kind of amateurish. The only difference is that we would of never pulled off such a stunt for the “interview of the month.” Never!

My advise to the people responsible for this.

1)) Don’t attempt using something if you have no clue on how to use it. Talking about the wobbly jib or whatever amateur device they attempted to use with cam c.

2)) If you know the show will end up center cut for the SD feed, use common sense and frame appropriately.

3)) Don’t fool the producer with saying you can match a small-chip low sampling toy camera to a full size full sampling camera when in fact you can’t. It’s one thing to use the odd shot were the majority of people won’t be too distracted but make sure you tell the producer that cam-c cannot be matched to cam-a and cam-c should be used accordingly. If you told the producer – then all blame is out of your hands.

I say to the producers at NBC.
This segment looked like a crew practising using new methods.
I know money is short but do not practice new things on air, on the most important sit-down of the month. Not only was it a disgrace to your viewers, staff and freelancers but also, it’s a disgrace to the President. Jesus!

If you don’t have a proper tool or properly trained person to do something, then don’t attempt doing it, Jesus that was awful! (talking about the c-cam and all the motion sickness affiliated with it)

 

[adam]

I just watched a portion of it. I, only noticed two cameras. One was a steadicam and the other was just handheld. They looked well matched and the framing/steadiness was about what you'd expect from a 10-20 minute hand held segment. Do you have a link to the bad part you're referencing?

 

[cameragod]

Hey Ivan I get what you are trying to say but I don’t think dragging Tom into it at the start is helpful… unless he shot it???
I think you are better to make your comment and let him make his own argument… if he feels the need to.
It’s good having you back but let’s try to keep this Pro forum focused on more light and less heat.

 

[Hiding Under Here]

Thanks for the support CG but Ivan and I are good. I think he's kind of asking me what I think.

I disagree with your assessment Ivan. NBC uses F900s. Great cameras. The two main cameras in this interview look virtuall perfectly matched to me. The lighting is fine. Nothing super artistic but solid. It doesn't detract at all from either shot. And the lighting was tough to do because of the third camera that is shooting from the side. In order to make that huge shot that looks into doorways in the background, the crew had to fly everything in so the stands wouldn't be seen. They go to that shot a lot because they worked so hard to make it. I agree that it gets a little distracting. Maybe the exposure is different than Cameras A and B. Maybe C shoul open up a little. And the shot does bounce a little. But all in all this is a pretty solid three camera interview. I also agree that the 4:3 safe framing makes the shots look a little loose or unbalanced when viewing it at 16:9. But they were really hemmed in by the mission of making that huge two shot.

 

[cameragod]

Sorry guys I must have miss-read it. Damn dyslexia gets me sometimes.

 

[EFP]

Thanks for the support CG but Ivan and I are good. I think he's kind of asking me what I think.

Ditto on the asking and thanks for the info Tom.

Are you telling me that the C-Camera was an F900?
If so, someone did some awful tweaking to it. Tom, can you tell me what they used for the third cam? Was it a jib or some kind of tracking system? It didn’t appear to be a steadicam but I could be wrong.

 

[EFP]

In order to make that huge shot that looks into doorways in the background, the crew had to fly everything in so the stands wouldn't be seen. They go to that shot a lot because they worked so hard to make it. I agree that it gets a little distracting. Maybe the exposure is different than Cameras A and B. Maybe C shoul open up a little. And the shot does bounce a little.

And there lies the problem.
They go to that shot a lot because they worked so hard to make it.

It was over-used waaaay too much and the bouncing didn’t help.

I also agree that the 4:3 safe framing makes the shots look a little loose or unbalanced when viewing it at 16:9. But they were really hemmed in by the mission of making that huge two shot.

I thought it looked better in 16:9.
Watching it in 4:3 was distracting to me because Camera B (The one on Lauer) was cutting off Lauer a little. I watched the thing on 4:3 and 16:9 BTW.

The two main cameras in this interview look virtuall perfectly matched to me. The lighting is fine. Nothing super artistic but solid. It doesn't detract at all from either shot. And the lighting was tough to do because of the third camera that is shooting from the side. But all in all this is a pretty solid three camera interview.

I thought that A-camera (the one on the President) had the nicer over all picture and C-camera had a very weak picture. I would of though that C camera was a smallest cam of the three.

Maybe I exaggerated a little in my first post. But to me, it was clearly overusing something just for the sake of using it. (C-Camera) Just because they worked so hard on something doesn’t mean they should overuse it, make the product look worse than it should. I also had a little problem with B-Camera composure.

I appreciate you insight Tom.
Can you anwser my Qs in the one post above this one?

 

[Lensmith]

Not trying to stir the pot too much...but I saw the interview and I too didn't think the camera's matched. Lauer's shot looked pretty nice. Obama's looked..."lesser". I don't want to pile on, and I was thinking about asking something here earlier, but sometimes just asking a question like that can be seen as trying to slam a fellow photog.

My thought's about the C camera were the same as Ivan's. It was the worst of the three and used way too much. After all, this is the President and I expected a higher, more consistent quality in the final product. I saw the interview on my HD set and the difference between the cameras was pretty obvious to me.

 

[Hiding Under Here]

Here's the best I can do given that a.) I want to answer these questions as best I can and as honestly as I can, b.) my name is public and c.) I have no idea who reads this forum.

Here is a link to some of the interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9FFU-iaaho

The cameras are -- most likely -- F900s because NBC uses the HDCam format and the crew that I know in the Boston area has been outfitted with an F900. I think it is the "R" version. So I would assume that all three cameras are F900s. And if you watch the Brian Williams special (as I did while searching for answers to this), by looking closely you can see that some of the cameras are F900Rs. They look a lot like HDX900s but when you see the side tape ingest mechanism it's obvious that the F900 is being used, at least with some photographers.

So Cameras A and B are, most likely, F900s. I think the shots match. I am not watching them on an HD monitor but rather a 20" iMac with a lot of compression noise in the picture. But to my eye, an eye that looks at this stuff frequently, they match. But the backgrounds are different and sometimes people equate the backgrounds with the look of the face because they like one shot better than another. Matt Lauer has mahogany lit up by a broken light in his talk space. Warm wood is appealing as a background. The president has a busier, more colorful BG and it is more distracting than Lauer's. But it is also the more appropriate BG of the two shots because it hints at flags and the appointments one might find in the president's dwelling.

You can tell that the shots are matched not by looking at the faces, but by looking at the white marble walls and the color of the blue decoration that runs horizontally around the room. Those colors are common to both Lauer and Obama. I think in one of the shots the decoration (the blue and black) is a little darker, But overall the wall and the decoration are -- from what I can see -- nearly perfectly matched. Now, if you match white, blue and black on two cameras, it pretty much flows that the rest of the colors are going to be uniform. No one has the same skin color, particularly Obama and Lauer. So you cannot use those variables as your proof of "matching". I stopped the video at a cut and moved from camera A to Camera B with my cursor. I saw nothing jarring.

Camera C is, I think, another F900 but it's on a Steadicam. That's why it's bouncing and floating every time they cut to it. And it doesn't feel optimal because they are going from close ups of faces to a wide, breathing shot. Perhaps a tripod would have worked better. But there could be many reasons for why they didn't. NBC has around 30 cameras in the White House for this special. They are tugging on the president for interviews as much as they can. Brian Williams wants periodic interviews. Matt Lauer needs an interview. The president is a busy guy and after a while the cameras are dragging down the operation of the office of the presidency. If you watch the Brian Williams special you can see the staff getting antsy about the disruption. And the crews are all wearing suit jackets and ties -- not the easiest outfit in the world to have on and do this kind of physical work. So they go into that round room, set up a basic interview with the hope of making a huge two shot that shows off the majesty of the White House. The idea is to use the Steadicam operator to emulate dolly moves. But he really has no where to go from side to side because there are lighting stands right out of sight blocking his ability to rock and roll. And when you get down to it, really all he has is two guys sitting down across from one another. A Steadicam is made to follow ACTION, not to be the third wheel in a static shooting environment. If you look at the Brian Williams doc, the Steadicam is flying all over the place making great shots.

These large set ups are incredibly difficult to pull off. It's not like these guys had ten hours to make this happen. They probably had more like two or three. That may sound like a lot to a local news crew. But in the network multi-camera world, that's only an adequate amount of time to create a set-up that has a LOT of compromises in it. The lighting alone to make the wide shot was time consuming because everything is up on stands and boomed in, up and over the subjects heads. They have to secure it firmly because no one wants to be the guy who gave the president a concussion from a boom arm that caved under the weight of the light it's holding. Then all the cameras have to be wired together with time code and audio and video out. The tech area has to be wired together -- there are at least three monitors on a table with producers out of sight. The audio is laid in. And Lauer and Obama need make up. Then they sit in and the DP probably has a minute to tweak the thing. All of a sudden they start rolling and now the DP or the producer realize the issues they couldn't anticipate because they didn't have the president or Matt Lauer sitting in those chairs for fifteen minutes to a half hour while the set was finalized. But they can't stop the shoot because you don't interrupt the president unless he has something he ate stuck in his teeth. You sit there and accept the compromises you made and hope that the next time you do this kind of pressure packed shoot that you remember what you vowed to fix in this one.

 

[EFP]

Maybe it appears as my post was slamming the folks involved a little to hard. Sometimes I wish I possessed Lensmith’s diplomatic behavior. Tom, you’re right, the pressure involved and amount of time for set-up must have been tough. I’m sure NBC and other nets call in their best people to do sit-downs with the President.

I do have some still grabs that show some of the stuff I’m talking about.

A-Camera on President Obama

The framing works for me in 4:3 as well as in 16:9
The composure works for me.
The camera set up looks a little green compared to B-Camera.

B-Camera on Mat Lauer

The framing is a little too tight to work for 4:3
The composure seems a little too angled.
The camera set-up looks a little red compared to A-Camera.

C-Camera

This shot is too wide for 4:3 and pretty well cut off both heads for anyone watching on an average 4:3 TV set. I’m betting the nets “center-cut” news shows because most folks still watch them on 4:3 sets.

C-Camera

Although these are just still grabs, this shot along with the above shot demonstrates the unnecessary “up and down-movement.” (Look at the doors at the top - look at the carpet at the bottom of pic) Unfortunately the shots don’t demonstrate all the bounce and jitter associated with the unnecessary motion. Nor do the shots show the “overuse of the C-Camera.

The last thing I’d like to point out is the skin tones comparing all three cams. The reds seem to be more matched on B-Cam and C-Cam. A-Cam seems to be more green and in my estimation, the most accurate.

As Tom pointed out, you need to look at backgrounds, not just faces to get a more thorough feel of the colour balance. I of-course did that before posting my first post. By comparing the far left BG on the President’s cam and the far right bg on Lauer’s cam – it seems that my Green – Red observations have some truth to it.

Thank you LS and Huh for your observations and maybe I was a little harsh in my first post but after all – this is a Presidential sit-down and we need to keep the amateur VJ quality a 100 steps below in quality. This shoot brings the VJ quality only 98.9 steps below.

 

[Hiding Under Here]

I don't see the green element in the shots between Cameras A and B. I'm looking in two places for it -- the whites and the blacks. The white walls match almost exactly in the screen grabs. I don't see any green floating around in the blacks.

It's more difficult for me to judge the wide shot because that camera is looking at what should be the fill side of the interviewees. So their faces are darker and the floor is darker so the comparison is tough to make. For me anyway.

The most bothersome part to me is something no one has mentioned. In the wide shot there is a vertical blur running down right side. Maybe that's an artifact added by compression and Youtube's servers. But if the camera was producing that artifact I would be worried about it. Remember too that a Steadicam operator is first and foremost a Steadicam operator, not necessarily a photographer. And Steadicam operators are more used to shooting 16:9 than 4:3 because most of what they do is cinematic in nature. The broadcast shooters are used to shooting 4:3 safe. It would be easy for the Steadicam op to make the mistake of framing for the widest shot and forgetting to be more 4:3 safe.

Once this thing gets set in motion it's tough to stop it.

I have tried to write about this as elaborately as I can so that people who are interested in this kind of work gain some understanding of what those of us who do it are doing. I make no value judgements -- good or bad -- relative to the NBC crews who worked this shoot. I think the job they did was well within the boundaries of a good day's work. It would be great if one of them were lurking and might contribute something regarding the observations and conjecture posed here. And thanks to the original poster for even bringing this up.

 

[cameragod]

A Steadicam is made to follow ACTION, not to be the third wheel in a static shooting environment.

I want every director out there to engrave that on their brain.


Funny all else aside what bugs me most about the interview is the cutting. For goodness sake let the camera finish its move before you cut away moron
If fact I think its the poor direction that draws attention to the other flaws making them seem worse than they are.

 

[EFP]

Re- the Obama – Lauer shoot in question:
Here is part one from NBC server.
Here is part two from NBC server.

Steadicam is made to follow ACTION, not to be the third wheel in a static shooting environment.

I want every director out there to engrave that on their brain.

Disclaimer. I have zero experience with Steadicam type devises and I’m not about to dispute what Tom and Stephen claim. I know that CG is very well experienced with gyro devices.
I will say that I have many video concerts that have steadicams on stage. I just recently watched one were the drummer and bass player are in a stationary position and the steadicam operator does some extraordinary wrap-around moves.

Stephen, you’re right, the directing is to blame for the bad cuts and for the overuse of the C-Camera.

Regarding the color balance, to me it looks more like a WB mismatch or more likely a set-up issue – the black balance looks fine.

The top left corner is taken from the top-left of A-Cam.
The top right corner is taken from the top-right of B-Cam
I did not do any tweaking but of course there may be shifting and artefacts due to cut and pasting portions into a new picture.
The two bottom pictures are the same as the top but I added chroma to both pics to exaggerate the green – red differences. You may say that this is an unfair comperastion due the two cams being in two different positions and you may be right.

 

[adam]

I think the reason for the steadicam being involved in the sit-down portion of the interview is due to logistics. Tom mentioned the incredible pre-production that needs to be done versus the nearly impossible constraints of operating in the most secure and (maybe) busiest office/house in the country. The steadicam was the right choice for the portions where Obama is walking around with Lauer. Now you've got a full rig going for a portion of the shoot and if you're the producer you're not going to say "The steadicam wasn't really designed for a sit down so lets ditch it and go with two cameras", they re-purposed it. It would have been nice have a 4th camera as the matched locked down two-shot but it wasn't to be I guess.

I think the best place to pull swatches from would probably be the wainscoting that seems to be in every shot and uniform around the office.

 

[Hiding Under Here]

I think the real question regarding matching cameras is -- without a technician on site, how close can you get them to match? You can use the same set-up card. You can black balance. You can white balance. But you really need a vectorscope to match color and nobody ever brings those out in the field. So you have to rely on your eye. You also have to run them into the same monitor and when you do that you can only look at one at a time.

Matching isn't all that easy. Most of the time you're going for the Homer Simpson standard: "close enough".

 

[cameragod]

Too many directors see the steadicam as an easy alternative to laying tracks and using a dolly.
There are a lot of things that seadicam is good at but slow long lens tight tracking shots are not on the list and no matter how often you explain that some don’t seem to listen.
For this particular shoot while the shot is wide there were only so many moves available to the steadicam opp.
Ideally they should have rehearsed them. Then cue-cut at the start and waited till it ended before cutting away.
It should sound like this:
“Coming to ‘C’ left to right… cue-cut ‘C’… …coming to ‘B’… ‘B’… “

 

[Tippster]

This wasn't going back to a truck. There's no engineer shading the cams. A & B are pretty damn close.

 

[Hiding Under Here]

Right. No truck. No director. Three cameras shooting onto onboard decks. Cameras video outputted to monitors where the producer watches. Tape edited back at the ranch. Camera operators know what to do. No direction other than experience and maybe a brief conversation at the start.

 

[cameragod]

Then whoever edited it needs their ass kicked.

 

[dinosaur]

I think the real question regarding matching cameras is -- without a technician on site, how close can you get them to match? You can use the same set-up card. You can black balance. You can white balance. But you really need a vectorscope to match color and nobody ever brings those out in the field. So you have to rely on your eye. You also have to run them into the same monitor and when you do that you can only look at one at a time.

Matching isn't all that easy. Most of the time you're going for the Homer Simpson standard: "close enough".

You're exactly right. We all do a lot of these ENG multi camera sit downs and know full well its easy to second guess the participants of this shoot and its infinite variables. We know the time and physical space imitations often placed on us, and once we start rolling tape you do indeed reach a "Homer Simpson" moment when the participants are already in place there's absolutely no more time for tweaking and you just HAVE to proceed. Perfection under these circumstances is very elusive. Walk in their shoes. The option of saying "Mr President, could you give us 15 more mins. to tweak the camera color" was probably not even an option. You & I know that one just doesn't waltz in to the WH with all that gear and have the luxury of a set-up time of more than a couple of hours unless its a special documentary.

Knowing that it was likely that F-900s that were used, you're looking at camera technology that is 10+ years old and thus much more difficult to match all of their parameters than the newer generation ENG cameras. Their scene files have a fairly widespread reputation for not exactly matching up color on two or more of the same model cameras. These cameras were probably not tied to a truck and therefore not afforded the luxury of having a color op tweak them into perfection or given sufficient time to reach matched perfection. Unless an "RM" box and VScope is used on site its its unlikely that they will be dead on the mark even if they are tweaked on the same monitor. Unless a quad split, live action comparison is made, the A/B switch eyeballing of each cam separately on the same monitor is merely just a subjective method. Even the shading of the different lenses used can cast a green, blue or red hue to "matched" cameras. Who here even knows if any lenses were swapped in between the walk-around and the sit-down. White & black balance will not fix an improperly shaded lens if the baseline is off. Even the color of the wainscoting can be an inaccurate way to asses this mismatch, knowing how we often "paint" the color of background walls with gelled lighting with even 1/4 CTO or straw. Not to mention any ambient background lighting. Only a white card or chip chart where the subjects sit could tell the truth. Additionally, that room in the WH is much smaller than it appears and there's a larger margin for error doing a three camera ENG set up in a confined space like that.

Yes, the Steadi op probably should have been told to just put the camera on sticks for the sit-down and lock down a wide 2 shot. The Steadi op probably was told to "freelance" by booming up & down during Lauer's questions to give a "jib-ish look" to the cutaways. The editing process certainly betrayed that desired look. In hindsight the field producer possibly regretted it, or who knows, maybe not.

CG you were right: In the end the editor probably could have fixed the slight color disparity by tweaking the whites & blacks in FCP or whatever they use to edit at 30 Rock or Nebraska Ave. In very slight disparities like this, the old phrase "fix it in post" actually could apply.