ADAPTING TO THE AGE OF REMOTE PRODUCTION

Chris Vivion, an executive producer, and director at Spacestation is an Emmy nominated producer with a knack for lifestyle, cooking competition, comedy, animation, and reality content. Chris has played a monumental role in programs for prominent companies and brands like Time Inc., Turner Broadcasting, Food Network, and HBO.

What was your first remote shooting project like?

The very first one was the most crucial. One of our clients is a live streaming fitness brand and their entire business is predicated on having people in the studio, recording talent in a very tight colorful LED lightbox that’s not well ventilated. When that was threatened, you think it's going to go away because you can’t have people in the box anymore.

We worked with the client to get the essentials but it had to be something that didn't take a lot of CPU power. We bought every single?USB to HDMI connector?we could find and I drove to?Adorama?through empty Manhattan streets any time they had a new converter and?Canon Vixia?camera. I could preset everything to all the settings so it would be high-functioning and get a good quality picture for everybody.?

You want to put people in a very comfortable space but not have lots of variables where they have to set up complex lights and cameras. You want to keep it as simple as humanly possible.?

?What were any of the pitfalls of remote production? Any disasters?

With streaming, music and bandwidth and camera positioning were always going to be an issue. Poor WiFi connection is also not great for high-quality products. The biggest pitfall is trying to create a normalized setup. You want it to be as simple and uniform as possible to get consistent results. So when you have people with different windows and light pouring in from one direction, you want to make sure that you can match everybody’s look.

Instead of going completely remote, we built a package for one of our DP’s in Brooklyn and one of our DP’s in Los Angeles so a single operator could walk into a client’s house with full PPE. The DP’s set up the camera, single-source light, they balanced everything, connected USB to HDMI through?Zoom?so that we could see remotely. Then that technician left the house entirely, and we conducted our interviews through Zoom.

I think there’s a lot of software that’s come out since the pandemic where people are trying to cater to these types of scenarios. For example, right now we’re using a custom piece of software that’s powered with the client’s own?iPhone 10 or above. Their iPhone records locally then transfers footage onto the cloud, and we get perfect 4K or 1080 footage so we can control the background, the temperature, the color, the intensity of the light. Everything is normalized and these interviews look very well produced, but they don’t cost the client an arm and leg.?

Can you change the background?

Luckily for us, we were able to settle upon a soft grey?background from Savage. Savage makes some pop-up backgrounds from gray to white to black. They also make green screen versions so you could key out the background if you wanted to.?

?What do you think about the future? Do you think this type of production is going to stick around?

I think people will think differently about it. I think some people are going to be smart about it. Do I think the norm is going to be that everything stays remote? Absolutely not. But I think that now there will always be some sort of hybrid version.?

So who’s directing these videos? Do you direct them remotely?

You direct them remotely. Technology is technology. It’s really the people that facilitate the technology that matter the most. It’s also, how are you packing up and providing instruction on these kits? How are you prepping with the client, the stakeholders, and the talent so they feel they're being handheld in the same way they would be on set? You need a human being who is patient and understands how to set up the equipment, walking the client through the process.?

And on the production side of it, you need a great director. You need somebody who is going to be an educator, a producer, a director, a cheerleader. That made a big difference for us.?

?Have you ever seen any similar productions done by other people? Have you seen any mistakes in those productions?

I think some of the Zoom integration in the award shows were pretty rough. It truly is a lack of pre-production time. For instance, for one of our events, we had a very popular celebrity who gave us ten minutes for a tech check, and then on the day of the show, when they turned on the camera, they were in a completely different location than we did the tech check-in. Their WiFi was terrible so we knew it was going to be a disaster.?

Live streaming and remote work are really tough. If you're not live streaming and you have the time to figure out what the client’s scope is, there’s no excuse for not getting it right.?

?Any tips you have for directing people? Do you think commercial production applies to ad agency shoots doing everything remotely?

We’ve done mostly big live events. We did do a big Food Network production in October, but it was a minimal set. So we had a client who was remote. I directed it, I was there with half the normal amount of people we would have had. We just synced all the cameras into remote software. I think you're seeing a lot of these solutions like?Frame.io’s camera to cloud?solution where clients can actually see your cut. I think that’s hugely important.?

It’s all about trying to make a connection when you’re in front of somebody’s screen. I think you just have to have a lot of empathy for the other person. You have to have a lot of patience and allow yourself a lot more time. The pre-production part of it is super important.

?If you’re not prepared, you can tell.?

Definitely. We do so many tech checks because we don’t know if somebody’s internet connection that we tested on Tuesday at 25 megabits is gonna be at 5 on Wednesday.

You have to think about contingency plans. Having great coms is super important.?Companies like?Clear-Com?and?Unity?have virtual com products you can get on your phone which creates a traditional almost walkie-type environment. Unity allows you to link in through whatever remote software you’re using and allows only ISO audio to go in. Those are solutions that have been in place for a very long time, they’ve just been appropriated for a Covid world.?

I think for a lot of places, this is going to set up the expectation that you’re not going to have to spend as much crazy money to get value. My business partner and I have talked about whether or not this is lowering the bar on what people want to spend. I think it probably is.?

I think Spacestation is well-positioned for that. We love an eleventy-billion dollar client. We do two or three national spots every year. It's great money. But at the same time, we make our bread and butter on over-servicing clients who need to get quality for value. We make a lot out of a little. That’s kind of what we’re good at. For us, our mindset is, bring it on!

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