Event Volunteer

This page serves as an entry point for Video Volunteer documentation, for people who have never done it and want to know what they might be getting into.

There are many entry points, depending on the event and audience. This is not how to do video yourself. For that, System-Stack#what-to-do-first

Job requirements: show up on time and pay attention. The rest of this gives you an idea of what you will be doing once you show up.

This page is about 10x as big as it needs to be. Most of it you don't need to know, but should give you some comfort and confidence which is a good thing.

We try to keep things consistent across events, but that's hard. Not every event is live streamed, has the same number of cameras, has the same conference staff positions, etc.

AV = Audio/Visual = The mics, audio mixer, speakers; Screen/projector(s), maybe lights. This is often a separate crew, who may not have people stationed in the talk room. Sometimes the video crew is also responsible for AV.

Are you interested in helping produce videos?

Assuming there is a Video Crew who have taken care of the preparations, volunteering to help is easy. The system is designed to be used by people with no experience in anything at all.

Let the Video Crew leader know you are interested, show up on time, generally 30-60 min before showtime. The sooner you let them know the better. Months before is great, but last minute is fine too. The only reason someone will be turned away is when there are way too many on the crew. But even in that case there will be people with nothing to do who will be happy to show you how things work so that you have a head start on the next event.

There are a few roles, often 1 person will cover more than one role. Ideally you want to be familiar with all of them and practice on the ones you are interested in. This takes about 10-90 minutes of orientation. You will get pointers like:

• pay attention to your job - If you are an attendee of the event, you may find yourself focusing on the event and forget about the recording. If you do a good job then you and everyone else will have a good video to watch later.

• There are typically people ready to help if you have problems. At a large event, there will be veterans who's top priority will be to help out the rookies. (example 2 room event: there will be 4 rookies running the equipment and 1 or 2 veterans available to help. This takes more people and the quality suffers a bit because there will be more rookie mistakes, but it ensurers there will always be someone to help.)

Camera

• resist the urge to zoom and pan. It is fun to do, but not fun to watch.

• If the presenter is moving all over the place, zoom out so that they move back and forth in the frame. This will let the viewer experience the presenters characteristics, which is the point of shooting the video and not just audio.

• Extra credit: If the presenter is doing laps from one edge of the stage to the other, zooming out to about 3/4 the stage, and pan just enough to keep them in frame.

• relax. you probably are not going to destroy anything, the video producer operator can always cut away from your stream if it really a problem.

• Try to spend 10 minutes practicing with the equipment before the event starts. Being nervous because you are not familiar with the system is one of the bigger problems - it doesn't take much to get an adequate comfort level.

Video Mixer (Voctomix)

• Watch videos and take notes of things you find annoying.
  This will help you sort out what you should try to avoid vs what doesn't really matter.

• Practice. Spend a few minutes with the test patterns or blank screen and no one on stage, switch between streams and layouts. Figure out the few things you need to click on or hotkeys.

• Being able to see the presenter talking helps the viewer understand them. A good example is when the presenter is speaking in a language that is not the native language of the person watching.

• Not being able to see the screen makes one wonder if it has changed, so even if the text is too small to read, having the projector feed PNPed is nice.

• More details: Volunteer:-Video-mixer

Sound Board (generally manged by the AV crew, thus nothing the Video crew needs to worry about.)

• no clipping - the worst thing that can happen is the level is so high that the electronics can't handle it and the curvy sine wave gets smashed flat. This causes the result to pop, which is very distracting and difficult/impossible to fix. one pop is annoying but ok. the presenter's voice being drowned out in a sea of pop corn is not ok. This is perhaps the worst thing that can happen.

• consistent audio - it is very annoying to watch a video where the audio level keeps changing so much that you feel the need to adjust the playback volume. or have to strain to listen to soft parts and then have your brain blasted by sudden loudness.

• In Fantasy Land the presenter speaks clearly into the mic, with a consistent volume and proper and consistent distance from the mic. When someone in the audience has something to say, they walk over to the audience mic and speak with the same consistency as all the other audience members. There will be no interfering noises, like air conditioners, silverware clanking on plates, alien invasions, etc. This never happens. Perhaps the trickiest part of the process: getting a feel for the behaviour of the presenters and audience and adapting to it.

• Coach the presenter and beg the audience to use the mic, but don't disrupt the event too much. Get each presenter to do a sound check, have some text for them to read.

• The point of a Room Mic (condenser, ambient noise) is to pick up things that the other mics don't: typically comments blurted out from the audience, applause, the presenter not talking into the mic. When there is something worth recording, you bring the level up so that you get a good recording. When the presenter is speaking, keep it low but not off; a little bit of noise is OK, it ensures you pick up everything that needs to be without making it hard to hear the presenter. Hearing the presenter clearly is much more important than hearing the audience blurts, but there should be some chance of hearing them even if it isn't clear. As a listener, just being queued in that someone is blurting, and maybe being able to understand 1/2 of it is pretty good. The presenters response will likely cover most of the information that needs to be conveyed to the listener.