WKYU LED Studio Lighting Renovation

Our studio facility was built in 1969 and, because of some power delivery issues, needed to be rewired to function properly. The lights in our studio were not operating consistently, there were small electrical arcing problems, and wires were becoming fused together. Infrastructure was original to the design of the space. In the mid 1990’s the wiring began to show significant signs of wear. Replacement bulb prices continued to rise and the fixtures became even less reliable. The problems associated with a complete system replacement were significant. The power delivery system was unreliable and out of code so a simple renovation of fixtures was not possible. Wiring replacement at the same level, due to the amount of copper required, was unaffordable (approximately $200K). Also, bulb replacement costs for the existing fixtures were exceeding practical budgetary allowances. Finally, the lighting control system needed to be completely replaced due to long-term wear and non-functioning, non-serviceable parts.

Incandescent tungsten television lighting instruments were, by design, inefficient. These fixtures generate heat first, light second. This studio utilized eighty-five fixtures generating a combined 62,860 watts of light. But it was inefficient light generated as a by-product of heat. A secondary problem of this type of lighting was increased cooling costs. After a significant amount of discussion and research, we felt that our best option was a complete replacement of all wiring and lighting fixtures. We couldn’t replace the existing wiring because of the cost. We didn’t want to continue using the existing lights because of power consumption, heat, and replacement bulb costs. Enter LED lighting. Significant advancements had been made in quality of light generated by Light Emitting Diodes. Several companies were working on developing instruments that were stable enough for the specific demands of television lighting. At the same time, lighting power distribution companies were integrating computer based technology to solve power distribution issues. Through technology we were able to replace the wiring, distribution system, and all lighting fixtures for significantly less (25%) than the cost of just re-wiring the studio at the previous level. And, we reduced our lighting energy consumption by 97%, yes ninety-seven percent. We are now using 1,826 watts of highly efficient LED light for our entire studio. We originally had 1,500 amps of power installed in our lighting system. Today we utilize 38 amps.

Additional planning and technical advice was provided by True Grip and Lighting in Knoxville, TN (truegrip.tv) We used LED-Z lights (led-z.com) as the primary white (key, fill, and back) lighting source. We found that this particular brand and style of instrument worked best. It also passed all of our color reference tests. In all we used 17 -LEDZ Brute 9 instruments, 18 -LED-Z Brute 16 instruments, and 1 –LEDZ Brute 30 instrument. For color changing we used Dortron 39" LED Wall Wash Bars RGB 84W (28R, 28G, 28B) and Dortron LED Multipars 54W (18R/18G/18B). Control was provided by Jands Vista. The iTap Mobile VNC (Virtual Network Computing) app was installed on an iPad and other mobile devices to provide remote control of the lighting system. That feature has been useful when setting color and intensity.

Since implementing this system we have been very pleased with the functional results. There have been no functional instrument failures and the system is working as designed.

WKU has added us to the campus sustainability tour as a regular stop and has placed descriptive signage outside our building. We were recognized with an Ohio Valley Emmy Award for Technical Achievement and we received the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) Enterprise Innovation Award for 2011.

WKYU-PBS Basketball Montage

WKYU-PBS Basketball Montage from WKU ETV - PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

WKYU-PBS through the Hilltopper Sports Satellite Network and Fox College Sports reaches an estimated 56 million households with 60 hours of live and recorded sports programming every year. The production unit responsible for this also produces Emmy awarding winning programming that has been released to PBS stations nationally.

American Fresco Trailer

American Fresco Trailer from WKU ETV - PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

The art form known as fresco is thousands of years old but still holds relevance in the world today. Humanities history and culture are captured for all to see and interpret. Now, from the award-winning WKYU-PBS and the nationally-recognized Department of Art at Western Kentucky University comes the story of the lost art of fresco. American Fresco is the story of an art form that is rooted in the past, but which reflects the American experience today. This trailer represents a documentary that is still in the making and reflects the excitement and visual intensity of the American Fresco.

Atlanta or Bust: 2011 College Sports Video Summit

Over 550 industry professionals gathered in Atlanta, GA on June 7th and 8th for the Sports Video Group's 3rd annual College Sports Video Summit. This was the second year WKU-ETV employees attended, 4 of our people (including 2 WKU students) made the early morning drive from Bowling Green, KY.

Summit really is the term to use in describing this event. Every major entity in sports video is represented and we are very proud to have represented WKU and HSSN at this event. More than any other event in the world, CSVS has a clear focus on the world in, around and about college sports video. An impressive amount of organization and planning takes place to allow the college sports-video community to share thoughts, ideas, how-tos and lessons learned about the ins and outs of the industry.

We asked our student attendees to share their experiences from the trip. First you’ll hear from Brianne Kelley, a WKU junior from Massillon, Ohio. Our second contributor is Scott Vennell, a sophomore from Chatham, IL. Both Bri and Scott have worked as production assistants at WKU-ETV since their first semesters on the hill.

Bri’s Take:

We arrived early that morning in Atlanta to hear the Keynote speaker, Chris Plonsky, Women’s AD/Sr. Associate AD for Athletics External Services, The University of Texas. Plonsky discussed the strategies and first-hand experience of taking a college athletic department like University of Texas and branding them creating their own network that will launch this fall. As a student working with sports on a university campus it was very interesting to hear and see a university work from the same framework we have and or what we started with and create something so impacting in the community. After a few more panel discussions dealing with the debated views of sports and content rights our group headed out into Atlanta to explore. Once we wondered our way through the streets of Atlanta we finally made our way to the CNN building. We decided to take the inside tour of CNN. As a broadcast major it was fun and interesting to see the actual studios, equipment, and set-up, but as for the tour it was very dumbed down for the public to easily understand and that dragged it out for those broadcast students and professionals like us. After, we took the time to see the city and sites like Centennial Park and The Tabernacle Theatre. Finding delicious food is never too hard to find you just have to look for one that’s still open.

The next day we started our day off in “Track 1: Video ROI” (Return On Investmetn) with a discussion panel about getting your content out to the viewers in a multitude of ways in the form of TV, web, phones, and tablets. The panelists agreed getting content out to the viewers on “any screen, anywhere” matters and is a wise investment for branding and important when looking to make ROI. However, they disagreed on views of where a station/network or college with a small budget should focus their attention and money on, but in the end it was ultimately decided that quality is far more important that quantity. As students Scott and I wanted to see what the other tracks had to offer. Although they were quite intriguing we felt that they didn’t fit with us as students, working at an already up and running station/network. So we ventured our way back to track 1 for the rest of the afternoon. They did a production video virtual tour of the Yum Center and we had a panel of those from the Yum Center and the University of Louisville to discuss the problems they faced in the decision making process to implementing the best technology to make the building a “2020 building.” The group responsible for the planning and design of the arena, the Louisville Arena Authority, put every effort into making the venue as production friendly as possible, while also taking steps to make sure that was true for many years to come. It was also really cool to hear about what planning went into the arena and the problems that they ran into as well as the final project because it is so close to us at Western Kentucky University. It was also amazing to hear that one of the final key problems they had came down to pizza and how to work around the Arena being sponsored by YUM food products including Pizza Hut and the University of Louisville is sponsored by Papa John’s. It seems like such a minute detail but holds such an impact that they can work so well together in the arena sharing the space effectively. After the YUM Center Case Study, we got back into the debate of content rights and complicated network agreements and how to use these networks to a college sports program’s advantage. We heard one final case study on Penn State’s Team creating a multi-million dollar construction project of broadcast facilities and highly functioning sports facilities for their use led by Jim Nachtman, Director of Broadcast Operations, Penn State University. The final panel we saw discussed the ever important, but widely looked over topic of safety. Much is common sense, but as they discussed many people forget their common sense much of the time. Others are key things such as safety rails and harnesses that must be implemented by each facility and broadcast program so everyone is under strict and safe guidelines so we can do our jobs to the best and safest of our abilities. I’m lucky that my campus and my station follow those key safety rules everyday, with every production.

All in all we had a wonderful time exploring the city and learning from the prospective of those around us. As a student I can say it was an amazing experience to get that opportunity to go in representation of WKU and HSSN.

Scott’s Take:

There has to be a great reason to wake up at 4 A.M. as a college student in the middle of summer break. Well, on June 7^th there was a great reason. At 4:30 A.M., I loaded up in a car along with Jordan Basham, Jessica Gibbs and Bri Kelley headed towards Atlanta for the SVG’s 2011 CSVS. It may seem a little excessive to leave so early, but we wanted to make sure we arrived in time to hear Chris Plonsky deliver the keynote address. Plonsky discussed the long process she and her team endured to create the Longhorn Network in partnership with ESPN. I learned that branding is important to all colleges, no matter how big or small. WKU is continually working towards this goal, the recent transition to Division 1A football is a prime example, and WKU-ETV/WKYU-PBS/HSSN can help with this goal by creating quality sports productions. These productions create an important link to fans, which strengthens the branding and fan base of WKU, and also provides an amazing opportunity for students like me.

CSVS also presented the opportunity to browse vendor booths at a technology showcase, I got a hands on look at the new replay server WKU-ETV/WKYU-PBS/HSSN is considering to purchase for the new high definition production truck. This system is a lot more versatile than the current machines we use, so it will allow us to improve our productions and provide even better experience to students involved with productions.

After the keynote address and technology showcase, we took the opportunity to tour CNN Studios. Although the tour included watered down explanations of some technologies used in television production, it was still cool to see what happens in the studios of a national news network. After taking the CNN tour, we decided to try and find a local place to grab some dinner. However, after walking place to place only to find that the restaurant no longer exists, we soon found ourselves in a bad situation. Without realizing it, we had walked right into Five Points Station. Within 30 seconds of entering this area, we quickly realized we should get out of there. As we turned around to leave we witnessed a failed pickpocket attempt, a definite sign we were not in the right area. After an eventful day made better by Jordan’s frustration of Atlanta’s one-way streets and unbelievable number of buses -which all seemed to be blocking the roads we needed to turn down, we finally grabbed dinner and called it a day.

The next day wouldn’t be nearly as exciting, but I learned a lot more from the CSVS sessions. The main focus of day 2 was about the future of sports production and the importance of creating a digital network. I learned that in today’s sports production, it is important to reach fans all on all screens, whether its TV, smartphone, or tablet. There was also a session that gave an inside look into the technology that is powering the new KFC Yum! Center in Louisville. The designers of this arena didn’t want to settle for 2011 technology, but instead “built it like a 2020 stadium.” The last session of the day discussed the importance of production safety. This panel led by safety professionals from Michigan State, UCLA, ESPN, Fox and CBS Sports outlined the safety guidelines the industry has established. WKYU-PBS has been following these guidelines for a while now, but it never hurts to hear the newest ideas on how to keep workers safe. Overall, the 2011 College Sports Video Summit was a great experience, and I am glad I had the opportunity to attend.

Conclusion:

We hope you enjoyed what Bri and Scott had to say about their experiences in Atlanta and at CSVS. If you want to find out more about the Sports Video Group or CSVS, visit sportsvideo.org for more on the Sports Production Safety Group check out the resources found at spsgonline.com

Harlaxton College: WKU-ETV in England

Field Production:
WKU-ETV had the opportunity in April of 2009 to travel to Harlaxton College near Grantham, England to shoot an HD overview of the facility and grounds. The Manor House was built in the 1830s for a wealthy Nottinghamshire businessman. Built in Ancaster stone, it is a blending of Gothic, Jacobethan and Baroque styles that contribute to a fairly dramatic appearance—especially at sunset. Our crew consisted of five people: location producer, dp/ld, associate producer, videographer/editor, and videographer/grip. According to our carnet, we traveled with 138 individual items of production related gear. Among those items were 15 – 50 GB Professional Discs, 12 C-47 clips, 11 Rosco gels, 10 voltage converter plugs, and 10 voltage appropriate bulbs for lights. Our equipment compliment also featured a Sony PDW700 XDCAM HD422 camera with a Canon HJ11ex4.7B (4.7-52mm) wide angle lens. We used Gitzo legs attached to a Sachtler 20P tripod head. Audio was acquired via Sony ECM-88B lav mics and Sennheiser ME66/K6 shotgun mics. Our lighting kit included a Kino Flo Diva-Lite 400, an Arri 650 watt fresnel, an Arri 300 watt Fresnel, two Lowel Tota-lights, and two FlexFill reflectors. We tried to pack light but still be prepared for any possible situation.

Shooting that location posed several challenges. We had to plan time slots for each location and had limited back and forth communication ability among the crew. The location was such that we could be shooting in one area and setting lights in another. We shot from sunrise through sunset so keeping batteries charged and the crew fresh was a challenge also. The location provided several beautiful angles and colors. Some of the visuals ended up being stunning—it is a tremendous setting with the building, garden, and grounds. We were fortunate to have four days of sunshine. We utilized three different videographers’ perspectives and took turns bringing our own individual “looks” to the piece. The biggest challenge we faced was sound. It amazed us how in such a large building there were very few quiet rooms. We ended up shooting most interviews in the atrium both during the day and at night—some as late as 11:30pm. It gave us the most privacy but provided its own set of issues being constructed mostly of glass.

We had no technical complications during field production and enjoyed getting to know the campus at Harlaxton and the people in nearby Grantham. They were all very helpful.



Post Production:
We knew that there would be some challenges in the post process of the Harlaxton video right from the start. The fact that we had one week to get every single shot required meant that just about every bit of space on all of our recording media we brought with us was used. When we returned we had 15 XDCam discs full with 50 Mbps video, which amounted to a ballpark figure of 18 hours of footage. Even when imported into our Avid edit system as proxies (1.5 Mbps MPEG-4, 352 by 288 recordings) the amount of storage required was staggering. We allocated one terabyte of our AVID Unity SAN (Storage Area Network) to the project and after ingesting all the proxies we were looking at the drive space being at about 65% capacity.

Careful media management was important to ensure a smooth workflow. All footage was logged and interviews transcribed by members of our student staff. The proxies were then sub clipped and additional metadata based on the logs was attached. I had the footage organized into designated bins; all external building footage had its own bin, as did what we called “internal beauty shots.” We also had bins for all class room footage, campus activities, and of course interviews, which were divided up into staff, faculty, and student. The Avid bin headings and search feature really helped in organizing and locating that one specific shot that was hidden among the 18 hours of footage.



I was also tasked with writing the project which even with a co-workers help was a daunting task. With over twelve interviews to work though we decided to give Avid ScriptSync a try. The process was fairly simple, ensure that the interview was transcribed properly; link the text file to the clip, and the Avid did the rest. From that point on all we had to do was double click a line of text and the Avid immediately loaded the clip cued to that exact same line. This meant that instead of scrubbing through a 30-minute interview to find a specific sound bite, we simply selected it in the script, and dropped it in the time line.

The entire project was a great teaching tool to help our student staff learn the concept of ardent metadata management, and consideration of the post process during pre-production and production to help ensure a successful completion of a project.

Harlaxton College: WKU in England from WKU ETV - PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

An Inside Look at Outlook

WKYU-PBS's public affairs program, Outlook is currently in it’s 22nd season of production. Although Outlook is a professional studio production, many viewers do not know that most of the production is done by students. As members of the student crew, we were asked to produce a piece designed to show the viewer a side of Outlook not seen before, an inside look.

Shooting was a fairly simple process. We used two Sony PDW-700 HD cameras with Canon lenses. In the control room we used a wide angle lens to capture 2-shots and 3-shots in a confined area. In the studio a telephoto lens allowed us to not interfere with the production but still capture close-ups and details in the studio.

The control room was dimly lit, so we used two Lowel Tota flood lights, bounced off the ceiling from about three feet away. We placed the lights in opposite corners of the room in order to evenly illuminate the small control room without causing any harsh shadows.

To shoot the interviews, we used an LEDz Trio Kit and the Outlook set as a backdrop. The Outlook set has a lighting system with the capability to change colors, so we used this to our advantage and switched colors between interviews. We shot most of our subjects in front of the Outlook set to show that they are a part of the production, but not on the show itself. When interviewing the director, Josh Niedwick, we set him in the control room to reflect his role in the production.

Post Production was a more difficult and tedious process than expected. We put together a three minute rough cut, but decided that the content focused on too many aspects of the show for that short amount of time. We found that we couldn’t provide enough details for each point that we had outlined so we scrapped the idea completely. Starting again from scratch, we directed our content in a way that focused more on the students' role in the production and less on the show itself.

Throughout producing this three minute piece, we learned the importance of using lights to separate the subject from the background. This is key to showing the details of the hair and shoulders of the subject. We also learned that you can never shoot too much B-Roll which is a problem that arose as we were desperately searching for more footage near the end of post. Also, we learned something that we feel is crucial to creating stories: Know what you want, but always be willing to change. We had a thought of what we wanted the piece to look like, but after all the interviews we realized that maybe it would flow better going a different route. We hope you agree.

Austin Anderson, WKU Junior & Cameron Epperson, WKU Sophomore

An Inside Look on Outlook from WKU ETV - PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

Yep, there's an app for WKU

WKU released an iOS, Blackberry and Android app in the summer of 2010. As part of the promotional effort to inform students, parents, faculty, staff and alumni of the app's launch a promotional video was commissioned by the WKU Information Technology Division. (Disclosure: WKU-ETV is a department within WKU-IT.)

The app itself was based on "Blackboard Mobile Central" . The natural first place to go with a promotional video about an application for mobile devices seemed to be allowing a heavy influence from the commercials promoting the Apple App Store, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Armed with the idea of paying tribute to the simple white background of iOS device commercials, we set off to our studio to shoot a round tests for the production. Utilizing the existing white cyc wall, a pair of Kino Flo Diva-Lite 400's for cyc lights, a pair of Diva-Lite 200's for the foreground, Sony PMW-EX3 XDCAM EX Camcorder, Sachtler 0450 tripod system, a volunteer hand model and an iPhone.

We quickly discovered that 'simple' was not the word to describe the process. What I meant to say was "Wow, that's very difficult to pull off and they make it look so easy, but real people breathe and have a heartbeat!" After reviewing the test footage (and deleting it so no one would ever know how poor of an imitation we attempted was), the decision was made to use screenshots from the app along with a mock up of an iPhone to create a completely virtual demonstration for the video.

Now armed with just the iWKU app, an iPhone, Photoshop CS5, Avid Media Composer 5 and an IPhone GUI Photoshop file from teehan+lax . I was able to recreate the experience of a simple white background and iDevice in the foreground displaying the various functions of the app. No need to worry about lights, tripods, cameras or heartbeats. This approach proved to be incredibly simple to execute with a pleasing result.

The entire process took about three hours from start to finish. I used the iPhone 4 to capture the screen shots of iWKU's features and transferred those into Photoshop. Where I used the iPhone GUI template file to place the screenshots into the device. Next I pulled all my files into Avid Media Composer 5 and quickly edited and exported a file for review.

The review process went quite well and we ended up with two versions of the video a 75 second and a 30 second version. Both were shown to prospective students and their parents at various WKU events, along with being embedded into the iWKU Support page.

- Jordan, Special Projects Producer

iWKU Promo - Version A from WKU ETV - PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

iWKU Promo - Version B from WKU ETV - PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

Location:Bowling Green, KY

WKU Admissions Video

It was a no brainer to use our recently acquired Sony PDW 700 XDCAM HD Cameras on WKU’s new admissions video. WKU’s campus is perhaps one of the most beautiful in the region and the HD format really allowed us to showcase the campus throughout the video.

We were going to need a wide variety of footage since one of the goals of the video is to give prospective students a really good sense of life at WKU. This meant that we would need locations on campus at different times of year and all the different events, activities, and academic prospects that take place on the hill. This created an interesting production workflow, since some of the footage could be acquired in more controlled set ups, while other shots were more “grab the camera and go” types of shoots when we would spot something on campus that we felt would fit perfectly in the project. The end result was footage that really illustrates WKU’s wonderful campus, while also giving the audience a real sense of daily life at the university.


WKU Admissions Video from WKU ETV - PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

The First Post: An Introduction

Welcome to our little slice of the Internet, thanks for taking the time to check us out!

For those of you unfamiliar with The Educational Television Services Department at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, KY... Don't worry, chances are you're among the majority! Not because we're new kids on the block, we've been around since at least the 60's. It's more because most people know us as WKYU-PBS and/or HSSN. For this blog feel free to call us WKU ETV. While some of the content shared here may also appear somewhere else in our distribution model, distribution will not be the focus of this effort. Instead we hope to provide the view point of the people who create the content that we share here.

This blog is in the early stages of development but as we move forward with adding content we invite you to check back and see just what we're up to.

We'll begin by catching you up on some of our recent projects, starting off with a video commissioned by the WKU Office of Admissions and another project that took several of our staff to England for a look at Harlaxton College and the opprotunities for WKU students there. Also in queue are several projects we have collaborated on for clients outside of the university and even an overview of a few cutting edge production tools we employ in our studio and field productions.

Thanks again for stopping in, we hope you enjoy your time spent here and feel free to leave a comment or share a post with your friends should you find something of interest.

- The Production Staff of WKU ETV

Location:Bowling Green,United States