I am Jason Staples a student of Connecticut School of Broadcasting http://www.gocsb.com. Recently I was tasked with my final assignment for a 30 minute news broadcast all the students will be graded on. My assignment was to shoot, screen, write, record and edit a 30 second commercial and a 90 second news piece. I also drew the position of Technical Director (switcher) during the final news cast! I am going to outline the 90 second news piece in this post for you all because I had a lot of fun doing it and I think it is good for ESPORTS as a whole!
Assignment day, pick 3 news stories to pitch to the director and executive directors and get approval on 1 at next class. I was stoked, first thing that came to mind, cover ESPORTS! I thought hard and wanted it to be perfect, went home and went to mlgpro.com to find out the next stop and date of the pro circuit, June 3rd through 5th in OH, perfect but tight considering the 10 hour drive, shoot screen and write was due on the 8th for approval to record and edit. This is night class and I have a job as well as a life outside my career goals, no problem I thought I will make time! 1st pitch done and very detailed, I whipped 2 other local stories together but knew exactly which I wanted to do.
Next class, sit with the director and executive directors of the show (instructors) to pitch my stories. With great ambition I explained and pitched ESPORTS first, explaining how the nations largest pro circuit held by MLG was going to be fairly close and there was a lot of money for competitors to win. They ate it right up, I didn't even have to really outline to them my other stories, only enough so they knew if ESPORTS were to fall through I would be confident doing a fall back story and not fail miserably. They gave me the go, told me to start making phone calls and report to them my progress next class.
11:30pm, I went home and signed on to mlgpro.com to find a press contact, the press staff for MLG (Katie) was very professional and responded to my request the next day! Everything is coming together! I called my brother (Servatose) and asked if he would like to assist in my assignment. Being a huge SC2 player and fan he said yes and made arrangement in his RL to accommodate me.
Next class, we all (12 of us) reviewed our progress, I was first and most squared away! The instructors (industry professionals working in the field) seemed as stoked as I was and gave me the go to sign out the camera for nearly 5 days! (usually increments of 4 hours by procedure)
We left on Thursday and arrived in OH on Friday with enough time to check into the Super 8 and sleep for 5 hours. Arrived on time at the Convention Center with so much excitement! I shot some b-roll on the first day as well as some SC2 stage events like IdrA vs MC. What a blast, I got to finally meet so many people I had watched or listened to since SC2 Beta, including JP and IdrA my favorite icons of ESPORTS. Saturday I shot even more b-roll, met more great people and saw even more pro games.
Sunday, At this point I am nervous about getting the final b-roll shots and interviews to cover the context of my story. I set up in the corridor and got the gull to approach Milkis and LosirA for a very brief interview, with some consideration they agreed! (thank you again guys!) Next up, LzGaMer, Torch, iNcontrol an LiquidTLO one after the other. They provided me with more than just the content I needed for my news piece. I did have questions prepared for others as well but its an action packed weekend for people involved with the production which is very understandable! (Maybe next time!) What a great event, I stayed right through the end of the show to get some b-roll of the winner as well as enjoy a great Grand Final game between LosirA and MMA, I am a Zerg player so I was a little disappointed but happy at the same time to have at least a Zerg runner up!
Ok so next class was Protools and held no bearing to my assignment, although I hadn't slept in over 28 hours at that point. Tuesday I signed out the Final Cut Pro Studio and screened my interviews to start writing a solid script, I ended up with over 3 hours of b-roll and 40 minutes or so of interviews! Finished writing the final script and emailed it to the executive director for approval.
Wednesday (a week ago yesterday) I get the go ahead to start recording and editing! I jumped into the Adobe Audition Studio to do the V/O. Come to find out I wrote about 30 seconds too much. No big deal, I cut out the carrots and left the meat and potatoes. Back to the Final Cut Pro Studio across the parking lot I go. I laid down my Interviews (Sot's - sound on tape) and V/O between. It was really fun and technical to dub the interview over LosirA keeping his natural language slightly in the back! Now to screen my hours of b-roll. It wasn't hard because only half my b-roll was shot with a tripod and that is crucial for my piece. All but the shot of MMA toward the end was Tripod and that shot you can hardly tell :D I laid the b-roll, added a little color correction here and there (not too much because its naturally dark in the venue and I wanted to keep the mood), mixed my levels and exported.
I am not sure if many of you are familiar with Aja TV or with NTSC and the workings of encoding for Television but I was really nervous when I loaded up the .mov file through Quicktime on the Mac screen, it was very grainy! The next day I expressed my concerns to the instructor and we fired it up with Aja in the control room. Much better! (wish I had/used a HD camera though, it still looked very good through a television!)
Rehearsal is in 2 weeks and myself along with a few other people were the only ones to meet all deadlines. That is where my collateral duty for the show comes in, I will be helping people record (capture from tape) and edit their pieces through then. (CSB is a school that teaches everything, not just 1 facet of the industry, this is why some people had a little trouble over others, they are learning something that doesn't necessarily pertain to their career as a whole and can be rough for some although myself, I love the radio side and take that just as serious!)
I hope you all enjoyed my little story without falling asleep! I got so much extra and want to say so much more about ESPORTS so after finals I plan to put together a real nice 12 or so minute piece on ESPORTS, Stay tuned! Please forgive me for grammar errors as I am a video editor and do not nor ever plan to have a have a degree in Journalism. Thanks for watching and your constructive feedback!
-ZerOsAndOnEs
Jason Staples Connecticut School of Broadcasting Student Jason Staples
Here is my 90 second news piece on ESPORTS featuring the MLG.
Yea, I used the best settings I could for youtube upon exporting based on the camera itself. It looks so much better on a television loaded through AjaTV in the NTSC format! Thanks :D
I think it was nice and simple, but needs a lot of work on the basics like the v.o (very important), the cuts between interviews and v.o. The camerawork for the interviews have a bit too much head room for my taste as well. Also you show a the same shot twice of a guy yawning and stretching, coupled with the v.o it makes it seem kinda dull.
I thought it was really great, however, I think it would be very important to provide information actually about the players. You interviewed very known players but from an outsider's point of view they know nothing about those people and might think "well who is that?" Explain to the viewers why they are important :D
But I really liked the news coverage and you did a great job with everything else I thought :D
On June 17 2011 10:49 Terrakin wrote: I think it was nice and simple, but needs a lot of work on the basics like the v.o (very important), the cuts between interviews and v.o. The camerawork for the interviews have a bit too much head room for my taste as well. Also you show a the same shot twice of a guy yawning and stretching, coupled with the v.o it makes it seem kinda dull.
Thank you for your feedback! Good pointers to remember for next time. Also, I felt the same way as you on these things during post. I would work using the camera if it was all I could get for a job in media but defiantly striving to get a union editing job where I don't have to touch a camera. :D I could get away with working with a camera after practice like this and enjoy it a little but not nearly as much if I just worked in post production!
The class I am in is only 16 weeks if anyone was wondering.
This is really good. You did a really good job, if your planned longer piece has the same production quality as this then I think you should have a promising future Obviously the picture quality is an issue, but I'm guessing that isn't your fault.
On June 17 2011 10:54 tQKyo wrote: I thought it was really great, however, I think it would be very important to provide information actually about the players. You interviewed very known players but from an outsider's point of view they know nothing about those people and might think "well who is that?" Explain to the viewers why they are important :D
But I really liked the news coverage and you did a great job with everything else I thought :D
yes, my main dilemma was getting it all in 90 seconds! Stay tuned for a bigger badder piece after I graduate!
Very nice work, I think it gives a great introduction to those who don't have a clue about e-sports and shows an interesting point of view/information.
On June 17 2011 11:35 Nethermind wrote: Hey well done man. Did you do well from a technical position?
We haven't run the show yet but I am very confident with the practice I have had on the switcher to be a very good Technical Director and that is in fact a position I would highly consider within the live television field!
Nice segment! The only thing I thought was a bit iffy was the head room the mic arm coming out of the side for Losira and iNcontroL (my teacher always was like, "It looks weird/awkward with the arm sticking out like that, never do that when taping an interview!"). But yeah, awesome job, good luck with the show! gl with switching too, no pressure or anything haha .
the only part that I would change if I were you is the very end transition. You almost seem to cut off mid sentence to sign off. Also the voice change between the two audios is kind of surprising (don't know how much you can do about this though).
Great interview, I hope you get a good review. ^.^
On June 17 2011 13:53 sleigh bells wrote: pretty nice. notice it kinda cut off losira and incontrol pretty abruptly, maybe you could work on that?
Ah, about the abrupt cut off's, their dialog continued afterwords and I had to stop it were it was. I didn't take them out of context I just used a brief part. I had to edit the audio also on some that have b-roll over them and not them to take out a couple uhhs and such :D To make them represent flawlessly less the abrupt cut off's :D
And to the above, I was stoked when I was walking with LosirA to the setup! and when I returned to my bro with him he was shocked more than me :D
On June 17 2011 14:28 Benga wrote: Toarch well said.Lz and incontrol are a good example of what he said
While I agree, it's hard to blame the players like they're greedy money chasers who don't care about the game. It's really the only way they can make a living doing this currently and came off kind of spiteful. As we saw when Root shut down and the leak about Tyler a few weeks ago it's VERY difficult to get paid to just play in NA, you NEED to stream, you NEED to coach in order to do this full time, and in the case of someone like Geoff, he had to drop out of shows because he wasn't getting enough time to play.
On June 17 2011 14:28 Benga wrote: Toarch well said.Lz and incontrol are a good example of what he said
While I agree, it's hard to blame the players like they're greedy money chasers who don't care about the game. It's really the only way they can make a living doing this currently and came off kind of spiteful. As we saw when Root shut down and the leak about Tyler a few weeks ago it's VERY difficult to get paid to just play in NA, you NEED to stream, you NEED to coach in order to do this full time, and in the case of someone like Geoff, he had to drop out of shows because he wasn't getting enough time to play.
tons of players in korea who play full time are more hungy in terms of income than mediocre foreing players.But they dont stream or coach they rather dedicate time to practice hoping to win tournaments,rather blame about circumstances.If foreign players think they cant win tournaments even practicing 10hours a day,thus made decisions to coach or steam, they should rather quit.
On June 17 2011 14:28 Benga wrote: Toarch well said.Lz and incontrol are a good example of what he said
While I agree, it's hard to blame the players like they're greedy money chasers who don't care about the game. It's really the only way they can make a living doing this currently and came off kind of spiteful. As we saw when Root shut down and the leak about Tyler a few weeks ago it's VERY difficult to get paid to just play in NA, you NEED to stream, you NEED to coach in order to do this full time, and in the case of someone like Geoff, he had to drop out of shows because he wasn't getting enough time to play.
tons of players in korea who play full time are more hungy in terms of income than mediocre foreing players.But they dont stream or coach they rather dedicate time to practice hoping to win tournaments,rather blame about circumstances.If foreign players think they cant win tournaments even practicing 10hours a day,thus made decisions to coach or steam, they should rather quit.
I really feel like you got the professional tone and look down for this. The only complaint I have is you used the same clip for the crowd shot but totally understandable. Other than that, seriously very cool piece and kind of fun to see the MLG done in 90 seconds! Maybe you can do this for the next MLG
Everything about this video makes it seem like a really good news piece. Even your voice follows the same intonation as a lot of news stories. A nice quick overview of the event, and lol at Milkis's voice being dubbed over Losira's. Really enjoyed it, thank you very much for sharing.
interesting showing. would be cooler if you could've shown some more epic moments like the crowd cheering / chanting people's names, to show how epic esports can be. otherwise a good representation of the field to people not familiar with the scene.
Apart from the using the same shot twice (the one where the guy is stretching) it was an awesome little piece. If you had spliced in a shot of the crowd going crazy when InControl gave his little message, it would've been amazing.
Pretty cool vid, however the voiceover seemed a little dry and forced. Also the transistions where pretty abrupt. However its miles ahead than anything i've done in my media classes, so gw. Oh and more footage of the crowd would've been nice. They seemed rather passive in the footage you showed, and the fact that incontrol was saying how loud they got when he won. Also the text seemed kinda out of place. Maybe you could've used the same sort of graphic MLG used to introduce players, or atleast make it more consistant.
Hmm, it's pretty good. I can see it broadcast on a local news channel as is. There are a couple things to improve upon I guess. I felt that while your intonation was nice, it was very slow. Atleast slower than your average speaking speed, I don't think you have to slow down to make yourself more understandable. Don't news reporters on site all go crazy fast? People can follow it for the most part.
So that and the early comments, it did look like 2000's documentary style footage. One guy said it gives it a believable feel, I disagree with that. While it does give a believable feel for a 2000 documentary. It's not and doesn't fit, so it doesn't give a believable feel for a 2010 style.
I'm not sure what else there is, I'm not good to notice little things but I heard people said you replayed clips. Never do that because people will notice and they can get distracted by being the feeling they get when they discover it.
Best of luck and I hope you can post a piece of a broadcast in the future where news clip from you got used.
Very well done! I'm sad that you didn't have more time to work on it other than the 90s time restriction, and the views that the people being interviewed expressed were very interesting to me, so thanks for sharing that too!
On June 17 2011 10:37 rbkl wrote: Great news piece, but the footage from your camera makes it look like this comes from an 80s news cast.
I LOL'd because it is true!
Also want to say that this is the sort of news pieces we need for people to actually understand eSports. Usually the questions are stale and don't focus on other things than how many ours a nerd has to practice, or how they "got into gaming". Seriously, old person making news piece. He is a young person in 2011, gaming is natural nowadays.
Starting at the Losira interview, the audio transitions begin to get a little "choppy", or jarring. I realize that you're making cuts between more quiet-background noise interviews to loud-background noise B-roll, so it's difficult to get smooth transitions here (believe me, I get it).
Did you use audio gain transitions? That might smooth it out a little bit. If you did, I would consider adding some of your b-roll audio to the clips with soft background noise. I would also consider using a continual B-Roll audio selection for all of your B-Roll clips that are in a row.
Imho, it "smooths" the transitions very well when you're using clips that have a large amount of background noise. It looks great overall from an editing standpoint. This is just a small "finishing touch" suggestion.
Personally, I think you sound a bit disinterested in the narration, which makes the whole story a bit boring, but ymmv.
To summarize: really take a look at your audio transitions and see if you can't smooth some of the "jarring" audio cuts, I would consider (if possible) redoing the voice-over with a little bit more enthusiasm.
Good luck, and what a great project to work on for class!
On June 18 2011 02:37 etherwar wrote: First off, excellent work.
Starting at the Losira interview, the audio transitions begin to get a little "choppy", or jarring. I realize that you're making cuts between more quiet-background noise interviews to loud-background noise B-roll, so it's difficult to get smooth transitions here (believe me, I get it).
Did you use audio gain transitions? That might smooth it out a little bit. If you did, I would consider adding some of your b-roll audio to the clips with soft background noise. I would also consider using a continual B-Roll audio selection for all of your B-Roll clips that are in a row.
Imho, it "smooths" the transitions very well when you're using clips that have a large amount of background noise. It looks great overall from an editing standpoint. This is just a small "finishing touch" suggestion.
Personally, I think you sound a bit disinterested in the narration, which makes the whole story a bit boring, but ymmv.
To summarize: really take a look at your audio transitions and see if you can't smooth some of the "jarring" audio cuts, I would consider (if possible) redoing the voice-over with a little bit more enthusiasm.
Good luck, and what a great project to work on for class!
Awesome, Thanks for the feedback! This was a rough edit for the deadline and was approved. One thing with news pieces, I wanted to keep it fairly raw without any crazy cross fades or video transitions for the show. Now if I was told it would be a feature piece for the news cast I would have gone all out on it. From my understanding, most news stories are whipped up on the fly and some even have to be cut in under 15 minutes to make air time! So the raw continuity between stories from the viewers eye is on the fly'ish if you understand what I mean.
Aside from that, I am going to go back into the studio and will take all the suggestions into consideration, finalize it as if it were the feature piece. With the abrupt endings a couple of them I actually had to use the same end word from another part of the interview because the original last word was melded with the beginning of their next sentence (like the me that was cut off it originally sounded like me-i with the e being cut off into the I from the next sentence). I think there is a quick way in Audition or Protools to manipulate the speech or copy paste paste and crossfade the very end to make it a more natural transition.
With the V/O I think I tried to keep it fairly serious. I am not much of a character so I will admit it was tricky and took quite a few different takes. Another thing is practice, its only a 16 week school with a ton of cramming and not a whole lot of graded projects such as this. Luckily once you are alumni you can use the studios and retake the coarse for free forever! After all the cramming I have a ton of plans including an e-Sports TV show when they launch their "All Noise Television". Here is the site for "All Noise Radio". http://www.allnoiseradio.com/ to give you an idea of how the show will work.
I like your idea and agree with the nat sound of the b-roll. All the feedback is greatly appreciated, Thanks!
Nice work man, I would totally want to listen to this news on TV :D. And yeah Torch made some very good point there. Now that I think off, I've never heard of pro Korean SC players giving lesson ever. O_O
On June 18 2011 03:08 ZerOsAndOnEs wrote: With the abrupt endings a couple of them I actually had to use the same end word from another part of the interview because the original last word was melded with the beginning of their next sentence (like the me that was cut off it originally sounded like me-i with the e being cut off into the I from the next sentence). I think there is a quick way in Audition or Protools to manipulate the speech or copy paste paste and crossfade the very end to make it a more natural transition.
Very good job with this, I didn't even realize ... And hacks like this are what make working in a newsroom fun
On June 18 2011 03:08 ZerOsAndOnEs wrote: With the V/O I think I tried to keep it fairly serious. I am not much of a character so I will admit it was tricky and took quite a few different takes. Another thing is practice, its only a 16 week school with a ton of cramming and not a whole lot of graded projects such as this. Luckily once you are alumni you can use the studios and retake the coarse for free forever! After all the cramming I have a ton of plans including an e-Sports TV show when they launch their "All Noise Television". Here is the site for "All Noise Radio". http://www.allnoiseradio.com/ to give you an idea of how the show will work.
I dislike VO and find it's annoying and difficult, especially if you're not practiced doing it so I sympathize with you here. However, it's also extremely important. If you listen to the news on television, you have heard how they seem to strike the right chord between disinterested/objective and whatever other "appropriate" emotion that the story would invoke. This allows them to maintain their objective demeanor and yet not come off as robotic or boring... tiny changes in inflection are usually all that's necessary.
Also, I said before that the VO made the report sound "boring" and I want to clarify that a bit. To someone that is interested in SC2/Esports, this does not sound "boring", but from the perspective of someone who is just watching the news, I believe this would be the reaction. So it's just my perception and assumption that a layperson would listen to it thinking "yawn". Small changes in the inflection that you use with your VO and the overall content that you present in the VO may help here (or you may decide you've made the correct decision and hit the right amount of seriousness that you desire). A big part of news nowadays is entertainment, after all
Once again, I feel like I'm treading a thin line here and want to emphasize that I'm not hating on what you have, and I'm not trying to be insulting (my apologies if it comes off that way). I'm just trying to provide useful feedback You've got a great product here already, and if I was in your shoes I would be very tempted to call it finished.
Absolutely awesome, Actually felt like I was watching the news maybe a quick cut of the crowd chanting MMA to show how passionate people really were there too would be great.
All around a very cool piece of work and even cooler that your instructors supported the idea of you doing it.
MLG being the biggest "esport pro-circut"? What other "esport pro-circuts" are there anyways? If you talk about any form of recurring tournaments, the GSL is the one on the top.
On June 20 2011 05:59 JustPassingBy wrote: MLG being the biggest "esport pro-circut"? What other "esport pro-circuts" are there anyways? If you talk about any form of recurring tournaments, the GSL is the one on the top.
Apart from that, it was a good article.
Hmm, I only voiced the facts that I received by email via MLG staff. It added a ring to the end so I used it. And GSL is a "Star League", no? I know its all fancy ways of saying tournament. Its like saying Burger King is the largest "Flame Broiled" fast food joint in the world when we all know McDonald's is the largest fast food joint, when you add specifics things change.
When I look at it myself I agree with the statement used. GSL is held in 1 spot over a month long season, MLG travels throughout North America, holding weekend long events, classifying it as a true "Pro Circuit".
Guess where I was going there was eventually players will be able to be stars without as much dedicated self promotion and hopefully be able to commit more toward skill. As someone mentioned above, you can't really be successful in the early stages without a lot of self promotion or a huge team.
I had like 30 seconds of voice that I just couldn't squeeze, so what you see is the abridged version. Thanks for your comment!
EPT
Obviously the picture quality is an issue, but I'm guessing that isn't your fault.
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