Behind the Scenes of Public Speaking
The "making of" Behind the Scenes of Public Speaking
Production
Selecting a Location
Finding a location for shooting video on campus was one of the most difficult tasks of the project. Due to a lack of professional lighting equipment, I sought a location with good natural light. As you can see in the photo on the right, the McCain Library Reading Room provided ample natural light with floor to ceiling windows on the south side of the room. All the video in this project was shot with natural lighting.
Camera set–up for interviews
While McCain Library offered excellent natural light, the sound was an entirely different issue. You might think of a library as a "quiet" location, but, believe me, it's far from ideal when shooting video. One problem was the lack of material to absorb sound. The windows, walls and high ceilings "bounced" the sound all around. It might have helped if we had used a wireless lapel microphone, but we were dependent on the camera microphones for the shoot.
A second problem with the location from an audio perspective was the constant background noise from lights and air conditioning ventilation. There was nothing I could do about this, but, again, a different microphone setup would have helped. I did export the audio portion of the video to Soundtrack Pro in an effort to reduce the noise.
Assembling the Equipment
The videotaping was done with three digital video cameras, two Canon GL-2s and a Sony (pictured on the left). Each camera is a 3-chip digital camera and I recommend strongly to use a 3-chip camera for higher quality video. If possible, I also suggest that all cameras used for shooting the video are the same make and model. I believe this will help with consistency of the video footage. As for all the still images, we used a Canon Rebel-XT, an eight megapixel digital SLR camera. For the project, we took over 200 digital photos.
Framing the Video
One of the goals of the project was to avoid "talking head" videos of student speeches. Also, I wanted to use close–ups of the speaker so viewers could see her facial expressions, eye contact, and other nonverbal aspects of the delivery. Framing for the interviews is illustrated in the first series of images below and the photograph at the beginning of this section shows the camera set–up. The second and third series of images shows the framing for the speeches.
A colleague of mine in the Music Department at Agnes Scott provided some insightful feedback about the framing. First, he questioned the use of the "stair camera" in the speech of significance and informative speech. It’s not a compelling shot and it probably does little to assist the viewer in understanding the speech. Second, my colleague asked about a camera directed at the audience. This is an excellent point. A cut–away to audience members listening to the speech would have brought more authenticity to the project. Unfortunately, the only audience members were myself and Jasmine Terry. I need to address this issue in the future. Finally, he suggested using a camera for the interviews that captures both participants. Again, I concur with this point and believe showing their interaction would have enhanced the video of their conversation.
Framing for Interviews
Framing for Speech of Significance and Informative Speech
Framing for Persuasive Speech