Hi,

My friends on a local UPN station show ( ATLANTA Tonight - Daily at 11:30pm ) are shooting with 2 Panasonic DVX 100, with editing on 2 AVID workstations. It's a magazine format with 2 female hosts. Produced by CSE.

Ed Hill

The Atlanta Tonight show airs at 10:30 pm on local station UPN 69 in Atlanta.

I saw a whole episode last night and the video looks very good.

Ed

Watched it the past couple of nights. Pretty good looking video, even if the subject matter was rather "light." If you hadn't said it was shot on a DVX, I would've known for sure when I saw a sillouette of the Panny's distinctive lens shade during the interview with the Braves' batboy.

I would say, though, that the show is a good example of why the DVX shouldn't be handheld in 24p mode. It's a unique look, sure, but it wears thin quickly.

This is one of those shows where one part of me says, "How inane!" and the other part of me says, "I wonder if they're looking for another cameraman?" :D

Regardless, I'm a supporter of locally-produced work, so kudos to CSE. I assume this is an independent production team? Or do they work for UPN?

Ed (if you happen to see this bump)

I was curious if you knew anything else about how "Atlanta Tonight" is produced?

Particularly, the audio set for their shoots. It looks like a lot of hand-held, with some lav work. From what I recall, I don't think I've ever seen more than two mikes in any segment/scene -- which would keep in line with the DVX's 2 XLR inputs, and might imply that they are running mics just straight into the camera. I was curious if they ever used a boom mic as well.

I don't know how well you know these guys, so you might not be able to answer any of these questions, but I figured I'd aks...

Thanks

I know this much because I interviewed for the camera job.
No booms, because the camera man works by himself.

They edit on the low end Avid edit stations and have 2 editors.
Yeh the subject matter is not in depth. But I like to 2 female reporters. Yeh that wacky camera style, 2 dutch angles every 20 seconds does get old after a while.

Ed

Thanks Ed

I've found myself in the same position with a possible local show here -- one cameraman (me) and a host, interviewing musicians and whatnot. The problem is that we often interview *bands* which means we've got 2, 3, 4 or more to worry about picking up in the audio. Add to that the host's dislike of waving a hand-held mic around and a general desire to keep the crew down to just him and me...

I could tell on Atlanta Tonight that they either use hand-helds or lavs. And if they use lavs, then only the host and one interviewee are miked, even if there are other people in the shot (they were at a Jamaican restaurant in a recent episode, and even though they had two employees participating in the segment, only one was miked with a lav).

Maybe I need to have the host watch a few more episodes of "AT" and tell him, "See, those ladies have no problem holding a microphone..."

(Hey, I also noticed that Career Sports is looking for a new Avid editor...)