Combining Video & Audio for Maximum Impact and Presence

Derek:

Good afternoon. Welcome back to another edition of B&H Virtual Event Space. You are joining three very nervous men right now. We've just been spending time in agreement talking about how nervous we are to go live today. I do this every day, and I know Bryan and Mike, no strangers to this. So this is something where it's like I don't know why we should all be nervous, but we are, but now that we got that out of the way, I'm trying to just buffer and get us a little more comfortable here. You're here for Combining Video and Audio for Maximum Impact and Presence sponsored by Earthworks Audio. Joining us, Brian Olinger, director of the iHeartRadio Theater in Los Angeles, but it doesn't stop there. Bryan, you probably do an intro way better than I do. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

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Bryan:

Oh, and you're you're too kind, Derek. We're so not nervous now. We have-

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Derek:

Did I do a good job? Did I break the ice?

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Bryan:

You did a good job. I appreciate you taking that initial hit for us, but I think we're all just really excited to be here. I know I am. Like you said, my name is Bryan Olinger. I am the director of the iHeartRadio Theater for iheartradio.com, iHeartMedia, the parent company. So we have a full service production studio there in Burbank, on the Burbank studio's lot that iHeart hosts all of their livestream events. So not only am I directing most, if almost all those events, I'm also the producer of those shows, and to a shared responsibility, I'm also running the venue, too, along with a team. So they keep me busy, and I get to flex all my production muscles in the job, and that is why I've been there for eight years, and will continue to keep busy there.

Bryan:

Then obviously, before I was with iHeart, I came from a pretty mixed background of Yahtzee commercials and some television, and even before that, if you look hard enough, you can find some really fun B-movies with my name as DP attached to them.

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Derek:

Wonderful. We're going to have to look those up later. Too bad we don't have Scott on the line. Scott would be pulling those up as we speak and be dropping them into the chat for everybody. So you dodged the bullet there, but I also want to introduce Mike Dias from Earthworks Audio. Mike, wonderful guy, wonderful guy. Can't wait for him to get us started here. He's going to go into a little bit about what this whole series is going to entail, and he's going to get the conversation started today, but before I do that, I just want to thank them again, just thank Bryan, Mike, Earthworks Audio for sponsoring this wonderful series, and inviting all of you as I always do to get your questions in.

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Derek:

You know we love hearing what you have to say, and we want to answer the questions that you want answered. So before we start rambling, I'm going to throw it out there. If you have a question, get it in. We'll see if we can get it answered, but Mike, tell us a little bit about you and also get this series kicked off for us.

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Mike:

Absolutely. Thank you, Derek. Really appreciate the opportunity to bring this to everybody. So I'm the VP of Sales for Earthworks, and we believe that we have the future of broadcasting mics, right? When we were first kicking around some ideas as we were talking with B&H, we said, "How can we help? How can we make sure that everyone who's creating content, sharing, presenting, whether it's a business presentation or whether it's streaming, gaming, you name it, what can we do to take the background from pro audio from all your favorite tours, from all the best records and bring that for you for your own content creation or presentations?"

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Mike:

So we came up with this platform called From The Stage To The Screen, and we're able to talk with 12 of our great friends at all aspects of the industry who are going to share best practices from your favorite concerts and from your favorite albums so you could bring those to your own storytelling.

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Mike:

So Bryan is our first guest, and he has such a wealth of information, but as he mentioned, he's worked with iHeart for all of their current livestream concerts, including Coldplay, Jason Aldean, and Alicia Keys, and what better way to really talk about how to combine audio and video for maximum storytelling opportunities. So with that, let's get right into it. Let's just jump right in.

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Mike:

Bryan, I want to really spend a lot of time talking about creativity and storytelling. So let's just start with this. How do you help your clients tell their stories?

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Bryan:

Well, that's a great way to kick it off, Mike, and it's interesting when we talk about storytelling in a live arena because I don't think a lot of people think about there being a story. Sure, there's a TV script, there's a commercial script, and we all know how to identify story there, but there is very much a story when we go into live production.

Bryan:

In my case for my immediate world, I'm tasked with working with the entire spectrum that radio brings. So I'm getting different labels. I'm getting different managers. I'm having Jimmy Allen with country on Thursday, and then I'm having Lizzo the next week, and then I'm having Coldplay the following week, and each one of those are unique performances. Even outside a genre, you have the type of performer, you have the type of stage presentation, and these are all elements that tell the story of the performance because what is a livestream if you're watching it at home and it's happening in a venue? Well, it's an event that's happening for the 500 people that are in that venue, but it's also an experience that you need to communicate through video and audio to a wider audience at home.

Bryan:

So when we talk about story, we really talk about what are all the elements we need to account for so that we're not just capturing and surveilling the performance, but we're actually communicating some of the energy. If we do our jobs right, you watch a concert and it elicits something in you. You get immersed. The same way a really beautifully directed scene in a movie can bring an emotional response, we hope to capture some of that ethos with our live capture production.

Bryan:

So for me, it's making sure when I sit down in these production, pre-production meetings with management. I understand what the artist needs to do technically and what they need to be represented brand-wise and image-wise and what their performance, what that particular album that they're touring with is trying to say to their fans and to their general audience.

Bryan:

So we really start getting quickly into two territories, creative and technical, and we balance those constantly because there's technically a third tier that we won't touch too much on, that's budget, but we play this balancing act where all of these things need to take priority, but they all have to work with each other.

Bryan:

I think we'd all love if we just had every tool in the box to open up and do it, but at the end of the day, it's a 60-minute live stream. We need to be very precise because once the machine starts, we're going until it's done, and that's out there live.

Bryan:

So storytelling for us is identifying those energies, "Is this a sweet, slow, dramatically lit ballad-based performance that we really want to move people on a more lower level? Is this a flashing fire, red focus on electric guitars and just the most screaming close up of vocals so we capture that raw rock and roll? Is this a big stage, big wide flashing tungsten light blooming good old country where let's recreate Nashville and LA vibe country show?" The stories go on and on.

Bryan:

So when you talk to me about storytelling, that's where we get at is we have a story, and at that point, it's the regular production workflow with pre-production meetings, directors, lighting directors, DPs, camera operators, sound mixers, broadcast sound mixers. I mean, you know how that crew list can grow.

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Mike:

Well, let's stay on that for a second because to me, this is the part of the business that's the most fascinating, right? We all work in the business, so we see the bottom part of the iceberg. As a music lover, someone going to shows, watching, tuning in, I just see the very, very tip of the end result. It's the same for content creators, and it's the same for business presenters, right? Your audience doesn't see the work that goes into it.

Mike:

I don't think we ever talk enough about the planning process, the rehearsing, the planning, the scripting. So I just want to dive into that a little bit more for everybody who's watching. What types of advice, tips, just guide rails do you give them? How much time is spent in the planning process, in that honing in story before you even get to the technical, the delivery?

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Bryan:

Well, that's great. You know where we honestly have to start is we have to start rescheduling, unless this is a particular event where we're going to commit many, many days of building a stage and setting or anything. The reality is is our format of shows, and to a lesser extent, a lot of other livestream-based shows, it's show up, play the gig, and give people a good show, and let's go home thing.

Bryan:

So for us, it starts with scheduling. How much time do we have to put together the stage? What stage space are we walking into from the day before? Then how much time do we have to rehearse? Are these new songs? Are these classics? Is it a mix? We build it out from there because at the end of the day, Mike, and I think we'll probably find ourselves digging into this deeper, you have to keep in mind that audio, especially in live performance capture, is just as paramount as video.

Bryan:

So for every hour that we commit on making sure the lighting is just right, we need to commit time to audio ESU. We need to commit time to rehearsing. We need to make sure all those inputs are accounted for and they're checked and then we have everything. That comes down to appropriating the right amount of time for each part of the day for this large crew to do their job correctly.

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Mike:

Well, let's touch on that, right? So audio does matter, but you have a really interesting vantage point of it, right? You're a video guy in America's number one audio company.

Bryan:

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Sure.

Mike:

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So you can really on that where most times in video when audio is not put at the forefront, what I usually hear from the manufacturer side is, "It's video, video, video, video. Uh-oh, we got to talk about audio." By the way, I see everybody at B&H nodding because that's the point of what this series is about. So you're saying, actually, it's 50/50.

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Bryan:

Yeah. So look, I always laugh, Mike, because even after all these years when it comes to this particular conversation, this bumper sticker saying shouts in my mind from long time ago from my undergrad, and it was on day one of introduction to general video, and the professor said, "Does anyone know what video with bad audio or no audio is?" The room was silent, and he goes, "Surveillance." That always stuck with me.

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Bryan:

What it was is it wasn't just a way to say, "Hey, everybody. Welcome the general video. You're going to learn about audio and video." No. What that actually speaks to is just a much deeper textural thing when it comes to the content we create. We have to go back to multimedia by definition, and you'll have to excuse me. I'm going to get a little media studies based here.

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Mike:

Yeah. Bring it on, bring it on.

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Bryan:

Yeah, yeah. So multimedia, if we think of it as just humans consuming stimulation, is an audio and visual experience. That's why it's so commanding. That's why movies can immerse us because it commands two of these major senses that we are using every waking hour, nearly.

Bryan:

So if we were to say, "Hey, we're going to put together this product that is essentially a representation of that visual-aural experience that we have in our actual lives, we can't cut 50% of it out. We'll lose the immersion process. We all have had that experience. We've all watched a television show that's live and the mic drops out. Everyone. You don't have to go to a media college, you don't have to go to film school to recognize that. You go, "Oh, I think the audio dropped out," but have you ever been sitting in a room watching the Superbowl and there's a small satellite glitch or a delay on the video and everyone in the room goes, "There was a glitch, there was a glitch"? No, you don't.

Bryan:

So what I'm getting at is it's so easy to prioritize video in the conversation of content creation. Listen to me, I'm a video guy and it sounds like I'm not going to bat for my own team here, but it's so easy because we have to worry about lighting. We have to consider lenses. We have to consider cameras. We have to consider video signals. We have to consider colors. There's a very large spectrum of things that need to be accounted for and technical specialists that need to be addressing it. For audio, from the untrained perspective, it looks far more simple. Put the microphone in the right place, make sure it's loud enough.

Bryan:

So what you get is over the years as things go faster and smaller and just make it happen, audio can easily go, "Okay, okay. Look, look, look. We're going to light this thing. It's going to be beautiful. We're going to lens it with just the most beautiful supreme prime. Did somebody call the audio guy? Make sure we get a boom in here or something." We're laughing. Obviously, some of the folks on the thing are laughing because we all have probably been in that room.

Bryan:

So for me, I'm hired as a full-time video person at the nation's number one audio company. By rule when I came on, I had to learn and I had to acknowledge that everything is an audio product. So when you're putting together your live show, you have to think about two different audiences, three different, honestly, the people physically standing on the floor getting to enjoy that show in-person, the folks at home that are watching the livestream on their television, smart TV, computer, all those things now, and they're hearing that as well, we'll get on that, and then all of our shows are simulcast on the radio.

Bryan:

So that's where I have had to go through this journey over the years and feel like I've really settled into a especially here is you have to think about everything that you're capturing and seeing has to play out without visuals and has to be dynamic in that sense. So that's always been an interesting creative challenge for me, and the most I can wrap it up in a sentence is any of my shows, if someone walks on stage, they'll go, "Hey, I'm so and so, and I'm standing here."

Bryan:

Now, for the audience who's watching that or for people livestreaming, "Well, yeah, we see you're watching. We see you're standing there," but if you're just listening as an audio product, you need these type of things, and that makes you think deeper about it. You can't phone in the audio product and not just because of your responsibility to an audio-only delivery, but if compromised audio happens, no matter how beautiful it is, your multimedia product is compromised.

Bryan:

I don't think that's considered all the time. It's like, "Oh, they won't notice," or "Oh, that's not where we need to prioritize our resources." The reality is ... Go ahead, Mike.

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Mike:

Oh, I was just going to say, well, what are the tells of when audio is not prioritized? I mean, I just got done watching Top Gun. Thank you, Tom Cruise, for saving the theaters, but we're not talking Top Gun budget. Where are we talking where this fits, and how can people at home who are creating as the one-man band take this and apply it?

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Bryan:

Yeah, that's a fantastic question. I think here's a really easy one. This is an exercise I think most anyone can do. Select your favorite streaming service. We all know after we've gone through all of our shows that we're catching up on, we all find ourselves late at night starting to scrape through the lesser watched things. You can find a myriad of trailers from movies that were made with lower budgets or made with conservatively low budgets.

Bryan:

I think we've all watched that trailer to a film we've never heard of or seen before, and it's shot really nicely, the trailer's cut really nicely, and there might be some famous faces you recognize in it, but after that trailer's done, you know that that movie didn't have Top Gun budgets and resources, and why is that? It was cut really well, it was shot plenty fine, it used the red camera, it used the prime lenses. Oh, it didn't have that thunderous mix. The dialogue was tinny. The atmosphere and the folly was missing some layers and your brain did not get immersed. It was just like, "That's some good shot video with some audio."

Bryan:

There you go right there, Mike. That's where your Top Gun versus not being in a position to always prioritize audio is the tell. It's not like some content creator or filmmaker forgot to do it. It's difficult and expensive to make Top Gun audio the priority when you're trying to just get your footage in a cam.

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Mike:

So how can you shortcut that? I mean, what choices do you have? You either, what? Change scene? Don't do it or resolve to fail? That doesn't seem like a choice.

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Bryan:

Yeah. Let's go back to story scheduling and pre-production. The way to help yourself out there is when you first start talking about story and you start talking about how you're going to go about making your film, capturing your event. You have to be considering audio just the way that I have to always consider this radio product in my mind.

Bryan:

You can think every corner of how your scene is going to look and how you're going to cut it, but slow down for a minute and make sure that you're also thinking how's it going to sound because you might have all the edits and all the shots figured out, but you might be thinking, "Oh, let's make sure that we have boom mics for this dialogue. Well, what are they talking about? Is it really intense scene? Do we need to think about how we're going to have a rainstorm outside or the pitter patter of water on the window to punctuate that this scene is sad or dramatic or is it some type of scene where we want to offset some of the drama by having the sound of kids playing outside even though they're talking about something really intense?"

Bryan:

So all of a sudden, maybe your pre-production is involving an audio mixer earlier. I've been falling into my old narrative path here. I probably should also mention the way this works on the live production ends is the same. Why we're talking about where cameras are going to place based on the venue, the back line, where vocalist, where bands and everything? We're already bringing in audio because we need to know is this something where we need to have a bunch of microphones and a bunch of inputs and make sure that we capture every instrument or are some of the instruments going to be digital playback instruments because our stage doesn't fit an entire orchestra, but that's what the song needs.

Bryan:

We can't bring that in the middle of pre-production. We got to bring in at the top of the show so that as we move along, we know that as we're going, "Okay. We're going to have this great guitar solo," I have audio who's able to tell me, "Hey, it's actually a lefthanded guitar and they're going to play it in this style. So you want to make sure you focus on that." Then suddenly, you have this whole sound story that the sound people are going to be all over. They're going to get that perfectly tuned and everything, but now you as a camera director and a visual director, you need to make sure you're on the same page because one of the biggest whiffs you can do is miss a solo or be late to a solo because, visually, you fell off the storyline.

Mike:

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Right. So multicam is like editing in realtime. You're guiding the eye of what to see, and if your audio isn't on beat, you've lost the immersion, right?

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Bryan:

Exactly, Mike. You nailed it.

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Mike:

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Okay. Okay. Makes a lot of sense. So what it really sounds like you're saying is in this idea of pre-production is also this idea of collaboration and what matters, what's important, what do we do. So that goes back to team and communication. Now, I want to understand what it's like on your set with everybody dialed in on comms and broadcast, but I also want to understand what lessons we can take from that.

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Bryan:

Yeah, absolutely. So in my world, once we've all had our meetings and we understand and have taken account of all the elements that we will need to be bringing to make an entire cohesive show, it's a live event, so like I said earlier when we started this conversation, once the machine's on, it's running until you're at minute 60 and you're clear.

Bryan:

Ideally, our target is there is no stop down and we don't fall off the storyline by being out of sync on anything, no missed cues, no missing the solos, et cetera. So how do you do that? How do you get 28 people, in the case of our shows, all executing their jobs at the right time, staying in sync with each other, no second takes, no take twos, no missing your marks? Well, it's communication. It's scheduling and it's communication. Everybody has to get together this master schedule and essentially signing our live script, a master run of show, something that just says, "Item number 34, which should be if we're on schedule, at 7:27 PM for 30 seconds. We need to see cameras are pointed at this person at stage left because they're speaking on this mic." It's that granular.

Bryan:

Then once you're in the show, everybody's just following this roadmap that in a perfect world we've all perfectly rehearsed, and we're all on communications, closed communication shows. This has been a fundamental of live production for decades, but something that we're just now starting to see get utilized a little bit more on commercial and narrative sets, but that is these closed communication headsets, and that is a series of channels. I think of them as really fancy walkie-talkies where it's just always on, and it's like everybody is on a conference call with each other, but can select who's talking to who at when.

Bryan:

We use this communication system so that lighting can talk amongst themselves, but then also talk to the video director, and the video director, of course, can talk to everybody at their needs, and everybody's at their station throughout the venue. Audio is in the audio land at the stage sides and at the front of house. Lighting is in the lighting land at the lighting booth, possibly at front of house, and then video control and the audio mixer who's mixing the show not for the people outside but for the people watching at home and listening on the radio, they're on their own separated booths, and we're all wearing these headsets and talking to each other in realtime executing this live product in realtime.

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Mike:

So I love this, right? I grew up in Vegas, Penn & Teller, our heroes. To me, this is deconstructing the trick, right? This is the reveal. As somebody who watches shows, you don't know or see any of this. You just get to see the final product, and it looks so easy and so polished. So what I'm hoping that everyone's getting is the amount of effort, team, and practice, and scripting that goes into something. If you're not on script, if you're not on mark, you're not playing. You don't even get to this point yet.

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Bryan:

Correct.

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Mike:

So I want to ask a few questions on this one. I want to ask about how you work together. I'm going to start with that, and then I'm going to get into about building team. So first, you have a lot of talented people, a lot of creative people working together self-organizing. How do you agree and when do you make a stop, meaning, "Okay. We're done with the brainstorming. It's time to move forward into the rehearsing"?

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Bryan:

Well, just like we have this position in television narrative, even include general content creation, there has to be a director. There has to be a appointed person who ultimately says, "This is how it's going to go." It's not a black and white thing. It's very much the job. The thing I'm tasked with with every show is playing that collaborative spectrum of when to yield and recognize a good collaborative suggestion versus going, "Hey, that's a great way to approach this, but in order for all these other pieces that I don't expect, just your department to be aware of, we're going to do it this way because I'm telling these other departments we're going to do it this way."

Bryan:

Really, it is a type of conductor role. A good director, in my opinion, has a working knowledge of every department because now, just like a conductor, I don't expect to go to the LA Phil and see the conductor and be like, "I bet he can play the violin better than everyone. I bet he can play the cello, too, but I bet he could pick up any of those instruments and generally know what they do and how they perform and what sounds they make." That's same thing in the world of directing. I am not going to be able to mix a 64-input show down the two channels and sound amazing on your laptop speakers, but I can at least know that a mixer has this big board in front of them and a lot of plugins and a lot of things, and I need to be like, "Hey, I hear something in my experience that sounds louder than it should. Can you find it and do it?"

Bryan:

The same point with videos. I'm not going to have the bandwidth to necessarily be making every lighting decision, but I do need to go, "Hey, lighting director for this particular scene, it does need to have reds. Can we use your tools to make sure that red comes from this location on the stage?" What I'm getting at is it's not a dictatorship, it is a collaboration. Really, experience helps fine tune that line you were asking about of when are you open to collaboration and when do you have to affirm your vision, too.

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Mike:

Yeah. It's not just your team you're working with. You are interfacing with the talents' team because they bring their own grouping of everybody who produces. So how do those overlap and merge to continue with the idea of telling a story, and then how do you gently guide and nudge that to achieve the goal?

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Bryan:

Oh, you put me on the spot, Mike.

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Mike:

Yeah. Here's the secret sauce right here. Dare pique my attention, I got my notes.

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Bryan:

Well, hit it a little bit there with gently nudge and guide. At the end of the day, I think always coming back to a general rhetoric of we all want the same thing, and that is, we want to show that's successful, that creates the space that is ideal for the performer to perform their best because when a performer performs their best, you get the best video and you get the best audio.

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Bryan:

I have seen shows with very few lights on stage, but the just raw energy and comfort and focus that performer brought, it was amazing. I've also seen shows where we emptied the truck and it had every flash and beam and light and everything, but the performer was sick the day before, and while not bad by any stretch, there was that click of energy that could be detected.

Bryan:

What I'm getting at is when you're faced with making creative decisions that need to be yours to achieve a vision and put the cogs all in the right places so the machine runs as efficiently as possible, you will have a management team that is in the sole interest of their artist. Ideally, and most of the times, these needs sync up. Everybody wants to look the right way. Everybody wants to be lit the right way. Everybody wants to use the stage the right way.

Bryan:

So when we gently nudge things, it's a very transparent dialogue. I feel like transparency is really the most effective tool when we come to this and collaborating with labels and artists. At the end of the day, I go back to we all want the same thing. With your backs really against the wall, then you have to go down to just physical and budgetary limitations, "Hey, I'd love if there was 50 drones doing a light lit formation in this room, but our ceilings are only 50 feet tall, and I'm pretty sure our drone will not operate unless it has at least 40 feet of ground clearance that it can sense." You'd get into those type of things when it's just really hard to do it.

Bryan:

What's great is technical limitations are technical limitations. They don't have opinions. They aren't there to be creative. They're on and off switches, they're electrical signals, and they don't care. So you can always back the conversation into that if you're getting really sticky with creative.

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Mike:

So there's one thing you just touched on and it was about capturing that energy of the artist or of anybody, really, because I think that's the heart of this. That's storytelling. That's what we're doing right now. How do I come through? How do you come through, Derek? How do you come through and how does the energy of the space come through to transfer the medium of education and entertainment? So what is it? How do you get that essence? Anyone who's listening, that's the nugget I want to walk away with. How do you use the technology, the tools, everything we're talking about to freely capture that?

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Bryan:

Great. That is the job, isn't it?

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Mike:

Right.

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Bryan:

That is the job. I think we've all heard it in whatever line of work you're in. It's like, "You'll know it when you feel it," but there is a certain amount of validity to that, and I go back to immersion. So like I mentioned, I came from a strong narrative background before I rejoined the world of multicam. When we were doing, whether it was a music video, a narrative film or a dramatic commercial, immersion is the end goal as a creator. You need to find the right recipe in the lighting, in the video, in the editing, in the audio, in the scripting.

Bryan:

You need to find just the right recipe that makes an audience member later forget for a moment, trick the brain that they're watching a screen and there's audio coming from speakers because isn't that what we're ultimately doing with well-produced content is we're trying to do this little trick to our brains that turns the off switch or bypasses the little thing that says, "That's not anywhere close to you. That never happened. That's not in a room with you. That is a bunch of different light dots on this gray box, and that thing you hear, that's just a bunch of vibrations inside those black boxes because isn't that what's happening, honestly, when we're watching something? It's just a box flashing and making vibrations. What we're honestly doing with what we curate is how we create good content.

Bryan:

So that's the scientific breakdown of, "Is your content good or is your content so, so or bad?" and it is, "Is somebody immersed?" So this goes across all schools of content creation is, "Did you get that awesome closeup while the vocalist was just hitting the high note and was the volume right there? We tracked the mic, and was there an awesome backlight that just even if it was just for that moment made the audience member feel like they were right there in front of them and feeling that note?" Oomph, when you get that right, you know you got it right because you feel it.

Bryan:

I can think of multiple times where we get that moment and I'm in the control room just in front of a bunch of monitors. If there was any person who was more aware of the processes going on, it's my chair, and I'm sitting there going, "Oh, my gosh. They're an incredible performer."

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Mike:

"Nailed it."

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Bryan:

Yeah, "Nailed it," and there are. I can think of not too long ago we had a show with the Black Keys, and there was just this moment where the lead singer goes for a guitar solo, and mind you, I'm in his room that's four walls behind. If the audience were to cheer super loud, I'd never hear it if it wasn't for microphones. It lined up. There's this beautiful light streaking across his guitar. There's the camera operator who was in-charge of covering him the whole time. Just found that perfect line and just went all long lens and just used the focus to move the depth through the strings. I'm just sitting there in the booth and just going, "Whoa! We got it."

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Derek:

Brian-

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Bryan:

Then you pop back to the wide because, "Oh, no. It's a live show. He's still going to go."

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Derek:

Can I jump in real quick?

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Bryan:

Yeah.

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Derek:

Because we had a question that actually touches upon this. Now, we're talking budgets and teams and having huge budgets and huge teams and how we work on a lighter scale. We had a viewer, Harry, who's joining us, who's asking just that. As a solo freelance filmmaker, all this stuff you're talking about, keying in on multiple solos during a concert performance, getting instrument solos, vocal solos, do you have any tips for people who aren't working with a giant team or might be a solo filmmaker for how to still carry that same effect in having these multiple angles and these multiple shots in a performance?

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Bryan:

Mike, I'm going to take a sequel.

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Mike:

Please, and it just dovetails. This is where we are right now today in the post-pandemic, the tools that are available, and let's keep going on this one.

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Bryan:

Yeah. Harry, thank you. That is always ... I should mention, even my shows, there's always a bottom line that's being monitored. It's funny. Even at my level, which is well-resourced, I'm still always feeling like I'm reaching for a few more layers on it. So just want to clear the air on there. I can only think of a few productions per year that just get everything they need, everybody else do it, but the point is, yeah, we're in an interesting time where this is actually an easier question to vet.

Bryan:

Mike, I think you and I were chatting about this a long time ago of, well, say you just have all the experiences in the world and you know how to break down a script, you know how to do all that, but at the end of the day, you just don't have a huge budget.

Mike:

Or team.

Bryan:

Or team, yeah. So then you got to play this game of reality and priorities. I have just myself. Okay. So now, there's a new creative layer to it is if it's just me and my friend, how do we sync up to the project at hand? You have to assess, "Okay. If I need ..." Okay. We'll use a working example to work through this, but I have a band that's a friend of mine and they're going to play a show this week and they want a multicam capture. Well, if it's just you and a friend or just you, you have to, first, approach the reality. Does that product typically get done by a single person? Well, the answer is no, but that doesn't mean you're up a creek without a paddle. This is where it gets interesting where I think this is an easier question.

Bryan:

We're at a unique crossroads where we're starting to be able to play this thing of how can I answer resource limitations with technology. Ask me 10 years ago when it was just exciting that a DVX100 did 2398 on the DV tape and I'd be like, "Technology helping me out," but fast forward now and more people than ever have access to mirrorless and DSLR cameras, microphones have gotten exceptionally more affordable, audio recorders have become exceptionally more affordable, the list goes on.

Bryan:

So for me I go, "Okay. I'm a freelancer. I'm trying to just shoot my buddy' band, do him right. Well, what are the priorities of my buddy's, the story, if we will, of my buddy's performance out there? Okay. I need a couple angles because I need to show the crowd, I need to show the venue, and I need to show my buddy who's the lead vocalist, but I also need to make sure I show the band. Okay. Well, it sounds like I need at least three camera angles. This is a live show, so I can't shoot it multiple times. So okay, I'm going to have to need three cameras, and we're going to have to hear this, too."

Bryan:

So then you start assessing, "What are some existing resources? Okay. The venue's going to give me at least some type ... Somebody's got to mix it together because the band's got to play through the speakers. Okay. Well, okay. Well, I'm going to do my best to prioritize and not forget audio. So I'm going to try talk to my buddy and see if I can record the mix off the front of house board. Oh, no. I only own one camera."

Bryan:

Okay. This is where we're a freelancer and we have to start getting really creative so that we don't go broke, right? First option, this gets down to new technologies. Everybody's got a Sony A7iii or a Canon R or, hey, even a Canon 7D from many years ago. Still, it's going to record nice video in a low light situation. So there are first options. There's the borrowing and favoring and hoping that maybe you can put together three angles that way, but then there's this other cool thing that's happening, and that is there's so much stuff out there that you can go down to your local vendor and you can rent things, and it's not going to break the bank.

Bryan:

We used to not be able to have that. Renting was a four-letter word at one point. You just didn't think you're like, "Oh, I'm just going to rent that," but now it's like, "So I can rent an R5 for $69 a day. Oh, okay. I'm going to do my job." 4K has never been more affordable. That's something for me. That's blown my mind from somebody who used to think 720P was just mind blowingly sharp.

Bryan:

So when I get down to that tough question of like, "How do I do dynamic stuff?" get on your computer and use this wonderful free resource called YouTube University and just find out how can technology help you. There is tools that are coming out all the time. They're getting lighter, they're getting cheaper, not cheaper, more affordable because I've seen some really amazing stuff that I'm still like, "How is this 100 bucks? It's recording four channels of audio and still giving me an out into my camera. That's incredible."

Bryan:

What I'm getting at is there are a lot more resources now that don't break the bank to do things that were once cost-prohibitive because you did need three cameras, you did need a four-channel audio recorder, and that was going to require having either a credit card with a lot of limit on it or having a serious budget to absorb that. Go ahead, Mike.

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Mike:

So you have the tools, you have the learning, you have the availability, and you have the creator economy, right? By the way, for everybody who doesn't follow you closer, who doesn't know this, of course, you have access to all of the world's greatest gear at iHeart, but you're doing this at nights and weekends on your own with the same type of gear you just talked about. This is exactly you. If we dive in a little closer, your wife and everyone she works with and represents, you are the creator as well and the content, everything, if you want to speak on that.

Mike:

So what I really want to ask is when you have all of this at your fingertips, what comes next, right? When you get away from thinking about boxes and cables and creativity comes back into it, what happens?

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Bryan:

Well, that's the beautiful thing and that's the answer, Mike, to why if we thumb through pages of catalogs and trade magazines that show, just these massive cameras with about every box and every wire on there, it's not to make everybody feel good or anything. No. Every box is handling some type of task so somebody can take that off their mental load list, and the same thing for large crews. When you can have just all the toys and everything, the reason you're doing that is at one point, it stops being about quality acquisition and it does start being about, "I don't want to be mentally encumbered by this."

Bryan:

When you get all of the tools rinsed away, what are you left? Great. You're back on the canvas. You're not worrying about, "Ah, man. Is that zoom motor going to allow me to do a slow zoom at the right speed while that acoustic guitar is being plucked?" No. When you have that properly accounted for, you are now just going, "Okay. Then at this moment, we're going to have a slow zoom," and immediately you're moving on because you know what the next cut is because you didn't have to think about that.

Bryan:

So that's that in a little microcosm, and I'm going to just loop that back to technology real quick, and that's where it becomes cool because on these smaller things is that slow zoom that I just described, that used to be a very sophisticated heat in motor attached to a very sophisticated Preston zoom system, and now there's this little thing called a Nucleus that can do that for a fifth of the price, and all of a sudden, other productions don't have to have that mental load on them because technological access, and I think that's cool.

Bryan:

You mentioned ... I'm fortunate enough that my wife works in the same field as I do, but she's on the much cooler end of the music spectrum with her 13-year website constantly exploring and discovering emerging acts, and what that's evolved into is content creation in her sector as well. Just even when I'm helping her out or seeing how her business is running, you don't want to always ... There is such thing as bringing too big of a tool to a small job, and we haven't really touched on this. In fact, we've probably been talking nothing about images of big footprints and everything.

Bryan:

There's such thing as bringing too big of a camera and too big of a setup to something that by design needs to be intimate or needs to be low stress because of the talent's sense. So that gets us into it's not always the biggest and the heaviest thing is the best fit for the job. I know viewers are probably like, "I do not want to hear another person say it's the right tool for the job," because it is accurate, but it's such a cop out to a much more complex conversation that always is, well, the right tool is the tool that you can afford and hopefully is the right fix for the job, too.

Bryan:

For me, that's where it's been so great that 4K and 6K are popping up in the same camera that I can take stills with and I'd be happy. So when I'm on jobs and we're going to go visit an emerging artist at they're rehearsal space, they don't want a one-ton truck showing up and shoving five Sony F55s in this tiny room. No. That's where I'm grabbing maybe my mirrorless body and some mirrorless lenses with auto focus, and I'm grabbing a small recorder and a couple of microphones that I was able to purchase myself because they were sub $500 range and I've accumulated them over the years.

Bryan:

I want that to show up in three big cases because it's going to be me, my friends, and we want this to be not imposing, but I still want to do, I want to walk away with a really great audio recording, and I want to walk away with 4K video with great sharp lenses, and I want to walk away with something that had some good lighting. Now, all of those boxes I can check with smaller, lighter equipment, and that helps the overall content capture when you don't want to have a large footprint. I spun off in the footprints there, but you can guide me back here, Mike.

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Mike:

Yeah. I just wanted to check with time and open one last question. So yeah, first of all, I wanted to thank you. I want to encourage everybody to check out your work, check out your wife's work. Just no better way to put into motion everything we've been talking about than to see it, feel it, believe it, and hear it. Again, all of this comes down to creativity, to storytelling, and thank you for sharing this expertise and this insight.

Mike:

We here at Earthworks have a belief that everyone is a creator, everyone has a story to tell, businesses, this is the wave of the future. You have to be able to figure out how to tell your story and how to communicate. If your message isn't landing, if it's filtered out by all the noise, it doesn't count, it doesn't matter, right? So this is a long-running series. We have 11 more of these shows coming up next week or two weeks, sorry. We'll have Paul Clemson from Theory One Productions. He helped set up the audio for Late Night with Fallon.

Mike:

Earthworks also has a podcast called Amplitude. That's available on all channels to dive into these tips and tricks from the stage to the screen in even more detail. Bryan, where can people find some of your information and see some of your videos and what you're talking about?

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Bryan:

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, one of the easiest places is, of course, iHeartRadio's YouTube channels. That's where you see all the VODs and the recaps from our shows. So that's youtube.com/iheartradio, and then just you can peruse all the live shows. You'd see highlights of song performances, and then some of my collaborative work with my wife's website, grimygoods.com. If you're looking for new music and want to see a few cool interviews with up and coming artists and really cool music, that's the place to be.

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Mike:

Thank you. Of course, calling B&H, of course, we can consume all of this at the event space, but I've got to say I am not just a manufacturer selling into B&H, I am a customer who gets to walk the floor, who gets to browse the web, and gets to interact with their specialists. It's so easy to learn nowadays when there are questions. Just ask. There are so many resources available. So for the full B&H team, a giant thank you for hosting this and for everything that you do as far as customer service. What other questions can we answer before we wrap and mind the time?

Derek:

Well, first, I just want to thank you both. Normally, I say content should be getting shorter because attention spans are getting shorter. Bryan, if I could keep you guys on for another two hours, I don't think any viewers would complain, and I surely wouldn't. So Mike, Bryan, huge thank you to you both and to Earthworks.

Bryan:

Appreciate it.

Derek:

This as we wanting more of this series because it really is people like this who are out there doing the things that many of us, many people that are trying to do it, many of our viewers aspire to be in these situations. So to get a firsthand look inside this is just awesome. I'm sitting over here and I'm like, "Man, I run this little production and Bryan's over here juggling knives and flaming torches and keeping his cool together on a day-to-day basis." So I just want to say it's just awesome for us-

Bryan:

Thank you.

Derek:

... who are in this industry. Look, we do this every day and we're a blip on the map compared to what you guys are doing. So huge, huge thank you on our behalf. I do have another question that was lingering from earlier, and I know we've danced in and off of the topic of getting all these visions together. It's audio marries video and a bunch of ... You have this person's view marries with this person's view.

Derek:

I know you talked about compromise and really not one voice taking over, but when you're working with these huge artists, I mean, and without going there because I know this is something where it's a touchy subject, but I don't think a lot of people realize how difficult it is to get not only all these experts. You have audio people, they're audio experts. They're in that position for a reason. Video, same thing. I do this. I do it very well, and then you have a creative, who sometimes creatives ... Your YouTubes, your YouTubes have been around for long enough to where they know the audio side, they know the video side, they know the business, the marketing, everything, and then you have a newer artist who might have blown up on SoundCloud, doesn't understand the industry, doesn't understand that, "Hey, Bryan's been around the block. He knows his stuff. Trust him."

Derek:

How do you really marry that? If you could give any advice for somebody who's looking to break in or who hasn't dealt with celebrities or with big artists, how do you marry that? How do you really take somebody who says, "Look, I'm going to trust you because you've been doing this for 20 years"? Then ultimately, you're talking about what you guys do. You still ultimately have your stamp on, your brand stamp. You have to provide a certain level of professionalism and a certain product. So how do you keep the stamp of the artist, the ultimate stamp of iHeart and what you guys are doing while respecting the professionalism and the expertise of all these pieces involved, if that makes any sense at all?

Mike:

It makes perfect sense. Let me hop in real quick, Bryan, and I just got to preface that this was not an alley you were planned, but you got to close with the mic story.

Derek:

Oh, there's a story. Now, we got it here. Mike, you can't just laugh at that.

Bryan:

I'll answer Derek's question and loop it back for you, Mike. Derek, I would say my short answer to that is always remember it's everybody's day at the office. Okay? It's a day at work. I know there's celebrities and I know it's exciting that you're doing something and you're not just crunching numbers on a spreadsheet, but it's still a job, and just as much as you're showing up to do your job as a video director and protect certain interests that are personal to you or are brand representative of who's hiring you, that artist has got a job, too. It's called show up, sing correctly, play in tune, et cetera, et cetera. I think it's really important being effective is the same way you conduct yourself in any workspace is remembering that you need to work with this person, you need to collaborate with this person because you guys are working on a job together, right?

Bryan:

I'm telling you, just drill that into yourself because everyone's going to say, "Confidence, confidence, confidence." Yes, please, stand up straight, use posture, use good eye contact, speak clearly. Those are very important fundamentals, but if you're having trouble, if you're fighting imposter syndrome and everything, just remember we're all reporting to work. Okay? We're all doing a job and we all want that job. We all want the people who we answer to say, "Good job. You guys did a great job." Okay? So when you keep that in your mind at all times, when you do need to work directly with those teams, speak from that constantly, "Hey, guys. I got this great idea, and this is going to make things really good. It's going to make my life a little bit easier, and I think if it's making my life easier, it's going to make your life easier," cetera, et cetera.

Bryan:

So it's bringing some empathy to the work as opposed to an iron fist. We hear that trope of the director. It is just like, "It is my way or the highway," and I'm sure those worlds exist and I'm sure there's validity in the granular levels of the details, but look, if you're just getting started and you need to start stepping up, no one's picking you apart as much as you're picking yourself apart. So just remember, you're showing up for work, do your job correctly, and speak from that rhetoric, and you'd be surprised at how well the people around you that you need to collaborate with respond to that.

Bryan:

All right. The other thing is ... Mike, just wants this now. One of the things that we didn't touch base on is year 2022, and there was this window of time that we're hopefully moving past, but two years ago, all this collaboration was done on virtual productions. For anybody who sat in a pre-production meeting where creative ideas need to be exchanged over Zoom or Teams or anything, all of those, all of that infrastructure, all that noise canceling algorithm technology, I'm sure we've all heard it. It really only allows one voice to get through before it cancels out another.

Bryan:

So you have a bunch of tinny, small laptop microphones all competing for brainstorming ideas sometimes, and there was this profound thing I realized that I was like, "I get it. People need to talk. People are learning how to yield to each other. We're relearning to talk to each other," but at one point, you do need to be able to assert yourself, and when you can't physically do it, you can't open yourself and find those windows talking, well, that's where you start looking at technology and thinking how people in our ears and our eyes digest things.

Bryan:

A webcam is a great way to really, if you're on your first meeting, get a good webcam. It will just really say, "Oh." Subconsciously, everyone on that call is like, "That guy probably knows what he's doing with audio," I mean, with video, but then the real fun thing is that you don't have the webcam is if you can get yourself a good microphone, when you need to say something important, just lean into your microphone and just eat it, and it just aurally will punctuate everybody's receptive brain part, "Oh, I need to ... Hold on, everybody. Hold that thought. Something aurally happened," and everyone will pause, and that's your window. You can create your window, "Excuse me. I was thinking ..." Boom.

Bryan:

So you want to talk about breaking down the real anatomy of how we communicate. That was a little thing I pulled from my degree in communication science to bend all these Zoom calls a little bit more to my will as a director. So I'll punctuate with that.

Mike:

That's a perfect way to end.

Derek:

Well, that being said, Tuesday, July 12th ... Am I close enough? How am I?

Bryan:

There you go. You got my brain to perk up.

Derek:

There we go. Okay. Good. Now that everybody's brain is perked up, Tuesday, July 12th, Mike is going to be returning for Look and Sound like you're the host of your own late night TV show. So make sure you all tune in for that. Bryan, Mike, let me back up off here. There we go.

Bryan:

Yeah. Now, you have to feather back.

Derek:

Now, I got a feather. I'm working at this.

Bryan:

You'll break the immersion. You got to pull back now

Derek:

This is what we're going to see. We're going to see how good I've gotten at all of this stuff by the end of this series. Am I a better host? Is my audio better? Is my video better? So that's the goal. Mike is going to grade me. At the end of this 12-part series, I'm going to just ask Mike to shoot it straight and I'm going to pick up little bits and pieces from everything, but no, seriously, this was awesome. I want to thank you both again. I learned a ton. You know I was paying attention and learning. I'm like, "Mike is too damn good at this." So I'm going to see if I can convince him to host things that are not sponsored by Earthworks. We're just going to bring him on as a special guest host and give me a break every once in a while.

Mike:

Yes. The answer is yes. I don't want to run over, but it all comes back to this one idea of teamwork, and as long as we've got Bryan and as long as we're already over, I'm going to stretch it. Bryan, thank you. I surround myself with phenomenal people. That's the secret of it all, from family and all around. Bryan, how do you pick team and how do you find people and how do you lean in?

Bryan:

All right. Listen clear for all my freelancers and folks who are trying to find their way. This one is one of my favorites to answer because I'm sure a lot of folks answer the same way. Everybody now can press the right buttons in the right sequence at the right time. They can open up their computer and they can Google, "How does this machine work that makes images? How does this machine work that makes audio?" and that's great. So for that, I really look for communicators. I look for thinkers. I don't look necessarily for the most sharpest, technical head, and that has served me so much because you know what happens is I can bring them into my family and we can cover off on the fine points. I mean, if they have a baseline specialty, then we can get to the real fine points because I'm probably going to change it anyway based on how I like to work.

Bryan:

So I want people who show up and just are happy to be working in this world, people who are passionate and enthusiastic about talking about the things. I'm not looking for someone who's just looking to punch their time card and watch the hours. That's how I build a solid team. Also, team members are going to work with each other. It's almost like trying to get your best friend to be friends with this new person you just met, and when it works, we all know how good that feels.

Bryan:

So it's so important that people skills is a value assessment because like I said, we can learn all the buttons and the latest lens and the latest camera body. We can all learn that together as it goes on and as I want to change directions, but what I can't teach is building friendships, talking to each other, depending on each other, and that's how you really build a good team is you look for people qualities.

Mike:

With that, thank you all so much.

Bryan:

There we go. Everyone's going to use that.

Derek:

I can't even follow up after that. Thank you guys again. I would just like to say Tuesday, July 12th, we will be back here, but huge thank you again to Earthworks Audio, Mike, Bryan. This was awesome. To all of our viewers out there, those of you that got your questions in, we appreciate you. We do it for you. Can't do it without you, but we have another rendition to the B&H Virtual Event Space in the books. That's all we got for you. We'll catch you all next time.

Mike:

Thank you.

Bryan:

Thank you.