List of 6 items.

• Producer - Joseph Laszlo ‘13

  Joe was extensively involved in digital arts while a student at HMS, and we were happy to have him return as our guest producer for this event. Joe trained the student crew in how to set up the cameras, intercoms and lighting. He has recently completed his degree in filmmaking at Fitchburg State University and is currently a full-time employee at New England Studios (NES), the largest professional sound stage in New England. Joe quickly gained rapport with the students and brought his skill and knowledge to the training and forming of the crew.

• Director - Toby Edson ‘19

  Toby has performed pretty much every role in live production and this time took to the the booth as the director. This is the most stressful job during a broadcast as it requires monitoring the incoming camera feeds, selecting the best shots in real-time, and then communicating with the camera operators over the intercom to fine-tune their shots. There is an interesting back-and-forth "ballet" that occurs between the director and the camera operators as the camera operators try to create what they think are the most interesting shots from their angles and the director works to get from them what he thinks are the most essential shots. Most of these negotiations need to be intuitive, as there is little time to hold long conversations during the middle of the broadcast. Each member of the crew is essentially trying to anticipate the needs of the others and respond immediately in kind. As you can see from the recording of the broadcast, Toby made excellent shot selections and the team worked well as a unit to get engaging pictures of the speaker as he engaged with the audience.
  
  In addition to his work during the live portion of the event, Toby also consulted with his crew to determine camera locations and sight lines. He decided this year to locate one of the three cameras in the balcony, which gave more of a panoramic shot,  and one that was an interesting contrast to the center and reverse angles from floor level.
  
  

• Assistant Director - Galen Fitzgerald ‘21

  Galen served as First Assistant Camera Operator (1st A.C.) in the Filmmaking block last Fall (2017) and slotted in as the assistant director (AD) for this broadcast. While the director is monitoring the overall flow of shots from an artistic sense, the AD is watching for technical issues such as over/under exposure, focus and framing issues. The director and AD communicate with each other and with the camera crew over the intercom.

• Camera Operators - Michaela Watkins ‘21, Annella Rizzuto ‘21, Julian Laeng ‘21

  Michaela, Annella, and Julian were all new as camera operators and they did a wonderful job. Michaela and Annella had participated in the filmmaking block class last Fall (2017) and had done set design and costuming as well as acting; Julian had also participated as an actor. This gave them a sense of the general process but also allowed them to see how different live production is from filmmaking. We train the camera operators to be alert and creative in looking for interesting shots. It is a fun game to try to frame the most creative shot so that the director will pick your camera. Some of the panning audience shots were quite artistic and added a lot to the presentation by giving the viewers the sense of the audience's participation.

• Sound Department - Rye Fought ‘19, Clay Ritter ‘19

  Although it is not widely known, sound is the most important element of a film or live broadcast. Audiences will sit through occasional picture problems, but if the dialog is not clearly audible, the audience will quickly evaporate. Rye stepped in as our Sound Engineer and managed a sophisticated wireless sound mixer that received feeds from our speaker Kim John Payne, a handheld mic that was used by the emcees to introduce and thank Kim, and a wireless boom microphone that was used to pick up audience questions. Clay, who in addition to being extremely talented is also tall :), worked the boom, finding audience members with questions and capturing their voices for the remote viewing audience.

• Executive Producer -- Jim McClure, Digital Arts Instructor