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

By: shift

shift — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:49:01 +0000

I think for now lavalier /lapel wireless would be nice if it wasnt to crazy expensive.. What would you recomend for wired/wireless lapels?

By: Darren Kitchen

Darren Kitchen — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:55:28 +0000

@Shift, It really depends on what you’re looking for. Do you want a shotgun, handheld, or lavalier (lapel) mic? Wired, wireless?

If you’re not sure just lemme know your budget and application.

By: Shift

Shift — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 06:48:00 +0000

Darren, i know this is an old post but i just ordered a zi8 to start doing a bit of internet video and was wondering in all your trials and errors what you would recommend for a good but inexpensive microphone.

By: Skint

Skint — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:10:00 +0000

The screen capturing is always a tricky issue, the PC’s are running at a high res but the final output is a fairly low res. This is what leads to the blurry screen shots. My best advice would be to lower the PC res to 800×600 and you the svideo output of the laptops straight into the vision mixer. Also the episodes are all broadcast in digital format so it would be better to deinterlace the footage. For your closeup shots check out the Panasonic MiniDV consumer cameras, they can hold focus right up to the lens.

By: longshotsa

longshotsa — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:21:42 +0000

As long as you stay with a fluorescent above 3000K then shooting indoors on a set with a lot of lumens should be alright. The higher lumens the better. Most news sets in television are going with this type of lighting for the very reason Darren is considering. Heat and Energy costs.

Standard fluorescents will spike in the green and blue though. Color balanced fluorescents, like those from studio lighting suppliers, reduce that. You could also use a very light yellow sunlight gel on the key to keep skin tones natural.

Whatever you do, white balance to a “white balance card”. Using a piece of copy paper isn’t pure.

Jury is still out for LEDs. Love LEDs though. It’s just a matter of time.

As for the content, I have been a lurking fan from the start and I did learn more in the beginning although allot of that content was just filed away as “cool”. I think the show has evolved into something more useful in the real world especially this last season. As long as the content continues to be informative as well as entertaining I will continue to consider myself a fan.

Thank you for technolust.

By: Atari6502

Atari6502 — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:19:41 +0000

Darren,
What model power conditioner do you use.
I may be having the same troubles.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:41:00 +0000

I’ve loved Hak5 since day one and love all the behind the scenes stuff. Actually a segment about how you guys produce from camera to fan download would be interesting. Maybe even it is just a Hak5 extra.

I would caution you about using florescent lights. They have the benefit of being cooler than regular hot lights but florescent lights also have a few negatives. You cannot really mix florescent lights with other lights because they are inherently green in color (although the do make day-light color balanced ones). In addition they go through a power cycle from an off state to a pure on state and back down again within a short time. It isn’t visible to the eyes (usually) but it comes across in video and still camera work as color shifts and problems with variations in exposures from frame to frame. This is especially true with higher shutter speeds. You end up having to shoot at 1/30 or 1/60 or so shutter speeds to get the full light cycle in each frame. This may not be a huge concern because you may already be shooting video in those shutter speeds. Just a note of caution.

LED lights might be an alternative. You would probably have to rig something up though because I haven’t seen any huge LED based lights that would supply enough light to shoot good video with. They might be out there though. Or better yet maybe that’s a Hak5 segment on how to create a huge light bank made out of LED’s. (Note LED’s tend to shift to the blue hues but they also make daylight color balanced LED’s now too.)

Keep on lustin’.

By: Chris Peden

Chris Peden — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:41:13 +0000

Darren,
I never thought that the HAK5 production was bad, even from the beginning it was better than most podcasts. I do feel however as we have seen production improve, we have also seen content quality go down. In my opinion the first season has been the best so far. I learned quite a bit from season one and it was hella funny too. You did in depth segments and now that seems to be a thing of the past. For lack of a better word you have become more “corporate” like, short segments, less depth and frankly some terrible topics. I find HAK5 less and less interesting each season. Maybe its because im not a hacker and I could care less about modding a guitar for a video game. Maybe im not your demographic in the end….but I did want to share my opinion. Im still watching, but not sure how much longer.

By: JmacAttack

JmacAttack — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:05:55 +0000

Yeah Ill be in an agreements with this, it’s hard to read them even when I play them full screen on my DivX player.

But yeah Ive been following Hak.5 since the beginning of Season 2. I can honestly say it has been great to watch it. My only real comment is that I wish there was more fun content (well okay the Drunk Guitar Hero Modding Episode was GREAT), but like I remember the days of the Evil Server and how there was a funny off-shoot segment on that.

By: Spink

Spink — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:38:19 +0000

Hey Darren

Great story.
Can I suggest that your next area of focus be screen captures and getting a more crisp/clear image of your screen shots? they are often blurry or full of artifacts making the point of showing the screen almost useless.

Thanks again for the stickers