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Hak5 production. A story of trial, error and learning at the speed of failure.

Posted on April 16th, 2008 | by admin |

Failing isn’t exactly something I look forward to. In fact I tend to avoid it if possible. However I have come to embrace learning from failure rather than fearing it. With innovation comes risk and with risk comes falling on your face. And after three years of podcasting I nearly consider myself a face-planting expert.

As the third season of Hak5 comes to an end and we begin pre-production on the fourth I turn my attention to once again attempting to streamline the production. With every new season comes new challenges and it becomes ever more apparent that the show revolves around the (seemingly rotating) cast and their lives, not the other way around.

I’ll give an example. Aside from having merely a vague idea of what we were doing in our first season we at least had a clue about production quality. We didn’t exactly know how to make our videos look great but we did know what we didn’t want. Much of this comes from a disgust of barely audible, horribly lit videos that litter social video sharing sites today. And much of the time the messages in these videos are rich and human and yet so lost in poor production that I rarely pay attention.

It’s a shame really as good production isn’t exactly the easiest skill to pick up. It seems as though you either learn “the way it’s done” in school or get creative with a lot of trial and error until you end up figuring out your own way. I lay somewhere between these two as my 90s stop motion Lego videos and never-realized film degree will attest.

So here is a story about three aspects of our production

• Lighting
• Audio
• Video

Where they began, where they are, and where I’d like to see them.

Lighting

Lighting was probably the easiest thing to figure out. It only took a comment or two from Digg or Youtube to figure out that a single desk light pointed at the “talent” wasn’t enough. A little research later and you’ll find that the basic 3-point lighting is quite achievable even on the most basic budget.

Clip-on shop scoops diffused by white shower curtains, cardboard and tin-foil or wax paper made up much of the lighting in the beginning. Now we use a more general purpose track of pars for edge and scoops with umbrellas for key and fill.

Looking forward I’d like to switch to a compact fluorescent system for both energy savings and heat considerations. I’ve found inexpensive replacements for our scoops but haven’t seen anything that will work with the track. I’d also like to focus more light on the set or background if you will. This is something I recently experimented in segments for 3×09 with the goal of more clearly separating the subject and background. More research is in order in that department but I’m sure it will be taken care of.

Audio

Audio wasn’t an easy thing to figure out. This is a perfect example of much trial and error. Our first audio system, if you can call it that, was two Griffin lapels intended for use with their iPod recording adapter hooked into a set of stereo-mini extension cables, a Y-splitter and an inline volume control. Watch episodes 6 and prior, you can’t miss ‘em. The sound was a bit tinny but at least we were loud and clear.

Going into the project I understood the importance of clear audio and invested our first $700 into the show with the purchase of a Sony DV camera specifically for the mic-in jack. This was a big deal at the time as I didn’t want to spend anything at all. To be perfectly honest I was looking at a crappy $300 Samsung DV camera that had the mic-in jack but Wess convinced me that we’d grow into (and eventually out of) the Sony. Still the lesson here is to never rely on the microphone built into a camera.

The rest of our audio adventures led us to a pair of inexpensive Audio Technica wireless lavs which were notorious for their RF interference. Without a fresh, and I mean really fresh, set of 9-volt batteries the things would have us wiggling around on set in a frustrating dance that can only be described as the “where’s that buzz coming from” ass shake.

In the beginning of the second season the wireless packs were ditched in favor of four inexpensive wired lavs, again from Audio Technica. They proved to be more clear and freed us from the once blooperific ass shake yet their own problems began to emerge. They relied on tiny watch batteries which were expensive and cumbersome to procure. Their tiny cables, about half the width of your standard keyboard wire, and 15’ length proved even more unwieldy setting up for and packing up from shoots.

Most recently our audio system was again completely replaced when experimenting with the whole live and live-to-tape/disk systems on season three. The problem: how to have four people on camera at once. A simple Y-splitter into a camera isn’t going to serve us there. The solution: A mixer. Finally! And with that mixer came XLR mics; something new I had been so timidly avoiding due to a lack of understanding.

Thankfully Matt entered the scene with his background in broadcasting and got us on the right path with a set of four XLR lavs. The path wasn’t without its own bump as the first pair of inexpensive mini-XLR lavs were proprietary to their much more expensive wireless packs. We had intended to use them hard wired though sadly no amount of fancy cabling could get them to work. To this day they lie in a bin along with the big white Griffin lapels, Audio Technica wireless packs and Audio Technica lapels on 15” stereo-mini cables; a total of $1200 in trial and error.

The audio problem was finally solved after picking up a $50 power conditioner. This tiny little rack mount necessity saved the day merely two and a half years late. We had suspected the power issue all along but never came across a conditioner. Sometimes experimenting, breaking the rules and coming up with your own way of doing things leads to innovation. Often times it leads to expensive and frustrating setbacks which could have been avoided with the right education.

Looking forward with audio? Are you kidding me I’m done futzing with audio! The current setup sounds great and aside from that fact that you’re tethered to a long, sturdy, infrequently tangled cable they’re #1 in my book.

Video

Surprisingly for a video podcast I consider the actual cameras the least important. I’ll shoot on anything really as long as it’s well lit and the audio is good. As long as the message and people are compelling it’s on.

We started shooting on a single CCD Sony DCR-HC85. They’ve proved reliable, predictable, and relatively inexpensive (~$700). We shot on three of these for a while until around mid-season two starting our migration to the Panasonic Pro DV line. The interview parts of the Pure Pwnage documentary (season 2 episode 5) were shot on a Panasonic DVC-30. It’s a solid 3-CCD camera that shares many characteristics with its more expensive brother the DVX-100, a staple of many documentary film makers.

With the third season we replaced yet another Sony with a 3-CCD Panasonic Pro DV camera. This time we opted for the shoulder mounted variety merely to make getting impromptu press passes at expos without a lot of social engineering easier. There’s a story behind this I’ll have to share some time.

Now on our way to the fourth season you’d figure we would toss another grand at replacing the third and final Sony camera with another 3-CCD Panasonic Pro DV unit. This remains to be seen but is relatively low on my priority list.

Looking back I’d say the camera upgrades have had the least affect on production quality increase. Sure the Pro Panasonic gear looks cooler on set than the silver consumer style Sony but once squished into Xvid or MP4 it’s not a big deal. That is to say as long as they’re white balanced. That seems to be an important step we learned once we went to live-to-tape and didn’t have the option to color correct in post.

Conclusion

Experimenting, failing, learning, and re-engineering the production of Hak5 has been a fun and challenging process. We’ve come a long way from shooting multiple cameras to their individual tapes and cutting in post, a process that took nearly a week of editing per episode, to shooting segments live-to-tape. Each new process presents its own unique challenges and as a producer I’ve been more than happy to approach them head on, even if it takes falling on my face a few times.

It must be underscored that the whole point of the production is to get out of the way of the content so that the creative stuff can get shot, edited, and published. Streamlining all this has taken a lot longer than I had ever anticipated and in some cases taken its toll on the quality of the content. My dream is to make all of this production seamless. Once I don’t have to worry about the production or presentation I can focus solely on the message.

I wish I could say the production process is finalized as there seem to be a few areas that need to be improved but I’m hopeful that will all be worked out in the off-season.

I’d say my biggest concern at this point is actually the last mile. The post-production part that this really long post was originally intended to address. Well, now that I’ve given some back story I’ll take a break and come back to that subject in a future post where I hope to harness the wisdom of the crowd. If this stuff interests you guys be sure to comment and I’ll make it a point to talk about more behind the scenes stuff going forward.

Anyway, in short: Don’t be afraid to ride the failbus every once and a while. Next stop might just be a real winner.