I'm currently prepping for another New Year's Eve event here in Las Vegas, and this year I am up to my eyeballs in video content. I've been plotting the lighting design, attending meetings and making budget refinements, but the most creative part of the preparation so far has been selecting video content for the party. Sounds easy, right? Well, it is, for the most part, but there are a few items on my checklist that help make the process flow smoother, so I thought I'd share them with you. Guided by Voices
The first question I ask myself is, "What kind of content do I need for the event?" Okay, this is likely the most subjective part of the process. I use my instinct, my gut, my "inner voice" to choose the right clips. In other words, I pick the content by feel. I look for clues by asking myself, "What is the theme of the party? What colors are in the scenery and décor of the room? What kind of music will be playing? What special pieces of video content are needed for the production numbers?" The list goes on and on.
In the production meetings that are scheduled in the weeks before the event, the most critical thing I do is to listen. I listen to the scenic designer, I listen to the choreographer, I listen to the producer, and I listen to the director. I want to absorb as much of their input as possible so that I can give them exactly what they are looking for.
In those same meetings, I pitch ideas. I gather photos and/or clips ahead of time and bring them with me to the meetings. And I am not afraid to use e-mail. As I search for visual content, I can easily send the production team a link to a photo or clip and ask for their feedback. And through that process, the visual concept for the show begins to take shape.
Party Time
In addition to meetings, another important part of the process is listening to the musical tracks of the production numbers. This party is a four-hour event for 2,500 people and has 10 production numbers. So I listen to the music and identify elements like tempo, color and energy, and then search for a clip that might fit that piece. Of course, each choice I make is subject to the final approval of the producer, because it's his vision of the show that I'm trying to realize. But if I play my cards right in the listening department, then it usually goes a lot better during rehearsal time.
After I gather my notes (and thoughts) about the overall style of the show, I then sit down with the content available via the media server I have chosen to use. For this event, I selected the Mbox EXtreme, which comes loaded with stock content. With such a big library, it's up to me to organize it all before I get to the show site. Also, custom content has to be formatted and numbered before it can be used, so a great deal of time has to be spent rendering with the correct codec as well as adding suffixes and prefixes to the clips if they don't already have the correct labeling scheme. That, my friends, takes up a lot of time, so I try to give myself several days of video content cleanup time. And I usually use every moment I can get.
While scouring the stock content, I usually discover that I lack some pieces that are needed for the event. When that happens, I turn to the web for content suppliers. There are so many good ones to choose from that I can't even begin to list them all here. Just type in "stock video footage" into your web browser search engine and start surfing. You'll be there all day! Since this party is a New Year's Eve party, I had to search for some party-related content. It didn't take very long until I found countdowns and confetti, so now I have plenty of party-related content to add to my collection. The nice thing about purchasing content from royalty-free content sites is that you can use it again and again on just about any kind of project and you never have to pay royalties to anyone once you've purchased the clip. That's a bargain!
Building Palettes
After organizing all of the content onto one external HD, I begin copying those files over to the media servers. One word of advice on this: Do this way in advance of when you expect to start programming because it can take hours to copy large numbers of large files from one location to another. Give yourself plenty of time.
After loading the content, I then start building palettes for each clip that I intend to use, as well as any other media server-specific palettes that I may need to use for programming. These palettes are very important for a media server programmer because they speed up the process of finding just the right clip for a look you're trying to build. No one wants to sit there while you painfully search through folder after folder, looking for the red clip you remember seeing yesterday that would be perfect for this number. Make a palette and save yourself (and others) some headaches and time.
I hope this has helped give you some ideas that you can use for your next show. That's pretty much the routine for me when I use a media server. I really enjoy the creativity and freedom that comes from blending video with lighting, being able to select the content that matches the idea in my head of the mood and energy I want to convey to the audience. And by taking the time to prepare my content ahead of time, I can spend more time onsite doing the fun stuff… like making the show look fantastic!
