Research

Multi-camera research



Book:
Mastering MultiCamera Techniques: From Preproduction to Editing and Deliverables

By Mitch Jacobson

Aside from looking into how you can sync and how important it is to keep things consistent, the preview of the book I had access to only discussed ways of planning a multicamera shoot, and the part I had wanted to look at (Production) was barred from people who did not own the book.  It wasn't as much use to me as I had hoped.


Book:
A similar problem persisted when trying to find more book based research. Due to this I shall instead look towards finding research on the web and though examples similar to my desired product.


Website article:
Chron
How to Do a Multi-Camera Shoot
By Chris Newton

"Also consider having one camera dedicated to getting close up shots of your actors that you can use during the final cut."
This is the first thing I'm pulling from this article. Due to the positioning of the presenters I will likely have two cameras for this purpose; one for the presenters on the left and one for the presenters on the right. This allows me to get a better angle of their face as they talk. 
In the same paragraph this is taken from it talks about using camera movement to establish movement to the audience. If my product was not a podcast I would be using this, but due to the nature of podcasts I'm likely not going to use it and instead will stick with static cameras.

"For the most consistency, use the same type of camera for each angle, and take test shots to make sure the lighting and shadows are consistent from all angles."

This is another very important thing to keep in mind, especially with my project as the consistency will help emphasise the live nature of it while giving it an element of professionalism. Luckily Springboard mostly lend out the same kind and make of camera unless otherwise requested so consistency is fairly easy to keep. I will attempt to avoid changing the scale in the editing process to avoid noticeably changing the resolution.

"Typically, you'll want at least one camera that is fixed in a location. This is usually your primary camera. You can have other fixed cameras as well, depending on what perspective you want to show."
While I plan to have all cameras fixed in this shoot, I will consider the central wide shot camera as my primary as it will have everyone in frame at all times and therefore is good to fall back upon between closer shots. It also works well as an establishing shot.



Primary Research

I made a survey relating to Podcasts in general and the topics I wish to talk about in the Podcast. I gave it to 10 of my classmates to complete. These are the Quantitative results. I would talk about the qualitative results but it's hard to get anything truly useful from such a small scale as there aren't many patterns that show up. I'll have to use other research methods to find what I was looking for in those questions, which is mainly the popularity of certain products in the different parts of media I wish to cover.

The first thing I asked was simply how often people watched Podcasts. No one said daily, which makes sense as there aren't many podcasts that are daily, and people often only follow 1 or 2 at a time. Ignoring the three that said Never, those that watch podcasts mostly watch between Weekly to Monthly. If I had questioned more people I might have gotten a result that leaned between one or the other, but as it stands they're completely equal. This means I would need to use a different piece of research to get a better idea of which to go with for my Podcast's theoretical air time. If I don't get that piece of information I'll go with weekly as that seems to be a common time frame that podcasts use.

Next I asked how often the Podcasts that they watch relate to Media and the topics I'm planning to talk about. As I assumed, Always has none. Aside from that and the people who put Never, half the people said it usually relates to my topics. This doesn't mean too much to me aside from confirming that there is an audience out there for what I'm looking to produce. If I did it again I'd instead make it so you can say what topics they mostly watch.

This one I'm fairly glad the answers where low. Everyone answered with 2 hours or under. I feel this is due to attention span and how it can be difficult to keep a topic going longer than that. Due to this I'll aim to make my Podcast under 2 hours. While 5 people said under 1 hour, I'm choosing to group the 6 that said between 1 and 2 hours and aim for that kind of length rather than something shorter.

This was the final question not just on here but in the survey itself, asking about their favourite type of media. This I feel is the most interesting question of the 4. Not many people are interested in tabletop games which is understandable. The thing most people are interested in is Film, which makes sense considering a lot of people came into the Media Course to learn how to make Films. Going by this I feel it would make sense to open with Film as a topic. Next was Video Games closely followed by Shows. This gives a rough order of interest along with a main 3 topics people would want to hear about. Going off of this I'd say the order of topics that should be talked about should go Film, Video Games, and then Shows. This way we're less likely to lose the largest of our audience due to them getting bored of the topic being discussed. Unfortunately with the lack of people interested in tabletop games I feel I might not include the section involving the tabletop game play and I feel it would heavily depend on the resources we have available at the time along with how long we run on.



Where will my content be?

Twitch is an exceedingly popular streaming platform that mainly focuses on live streaming games, although there are a large population of content creators that focus on things other than games. It boasts a lot of intractability between the creator and audience along with personalised rewards for audience members that donate to the creator. This makes it popular as a way for content creators to use twitch as a side job or sometimes even their full time job while still offering massive amounts of flexibility in the kinds of content they produce.




Target audience

The above statistics where found and compiled by influencermarketinghub.com in this website. In the website they expand upon what is written above and provide commentary on what this means in comparison to other statistics they have collected (For instance 81.5% of Twitch Users are Male yet 41% of Gamers are Female, suggesting a far stronger demographic for twitch)

Based on this I shall target an audience in the same range, at around 18-34. They mention that going up to 18-49 brings the percentage up to 73% from 55%, but as the first is closer to my age range it'll be easier for me and my guests to target that audience and they will relate more to us. Due to this I shall allow mild language and a wide range of topics while gearing the topics towards recent things that older teens and younger adults would enjoy or have seen. 

Also I shall aim towards a male audience. While I won't focus too heavily to avoid alienating a female audience, I will still lean towards topics of games and movies that men would enjoy considering the high percentage. This means I'll talk more about recent films such as the Joker and Dr Sleep as opposed to Frozen 2 and Last Christmas due to their male leaning audience, and the same will be applied to the types of games we'll talk about.

For obvious reasoning this will be in English as I don't speak anything else along with large percentage of English speakers on Twitch. Had I been planing to use a different platform that had a different language as the most spoken I would likely find an alternative as my content wouldn't be as well received.

Due to the main ethnicity and the peak time I will air the show around 16:00 EST (21:00 GMT). There's not a lot I feel I can do to lean towards american viewers but I can lean it towards the traditions of an evening show using slower relaxing music and lower lighting to set the mood. This will also help the whole thing feel more personal and connect to the audience more.


What is my content?

I want to make a video podcast that talks about games (both video and tabletop), TV, and other things relating to nerd culture along with some possible life advice thrown in. At various intervals we will take short breaks from the talks to play some kind of tabletop game, such as Superfight or Secret Hitler. The podcast section of my podcast is inspired by other online podcasts such as the Totalbiscuit's Co-Optional Podcast, Nerd³'s Podcats, and Rooster Teeth's Always Open. Meanwhile the gaming sections are heavily inspired by Totalbiscuit's Co-Optional Lounge, Nerd³'s Fustercluck, Polygon's Overboard. While these all contribute to the kind of theme, tone, and setup I wish to use, there are other podcasts and miscellaneous works that also inspire the mood and setup I wish to go with without influencing the theme too much. For instance Polygon's Unraveled heavily inspires what tone I wish to have, Critical Role's Talks Machina inspires some of my ideas for setup, and Critical Role's Campaign 1 and 2 inspire both.


Video games


Here I talk about the current trends in video games as that's a main and expansive topic I wish to cover.

What's popular?

According to This List, the top 10 games are:
10) PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
9) Rocket League
8) Overwatch
7) Red Dead Redemption 2
6) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
5) Roblox
4) Rainbow 6 Seige
3) Fortnite
2) Grand Theft Auto 5
1) Minecraft

While This List looks into over 12 of the best games of 2019 in no particular order:
- Apex Legends
- Art Sqool
- A Short Hike
- Baba Is You
- Cadence Of Hyrule
- Control
- Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
- Devil May Cry 5
- The Division 2
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses
- Gato Roboto
- and more...


I feel The most popular outright are far more well-known and talked about than the top games of 2019, with Minecraft making a resurgence, Super Smash Bros making another splash with their recent addition of Sans Undertale, and GTA's racy and controversial infamy still lasting from 6 years ago. On the other hand, out of the 12 listed games of 2019, I actually knew about only 4 or 5, and only 2 or 3 of them seem like they have more than a cult following (Apex, Crash Racing, and maybe DMC or Fire Emblem). From this I know that Video Game based conversation will likely steer more towards the top 10 than the top 12 of 2019. However I feel that the particular group of people I wish to have on the show, including myself, are more likely to ignore both lists in favour of more obscure games we are particularly interested in. Depending on how well known those games are, this could be a problem as we could lose some of our audience though the less known topics we end up discussing. To help this I'll attempt to diversify the topics between the popular and obscure games.