Blackmagic Studio Cameras are always finding new ways to impress with their quality style of shooting and their products. Recently, Conor Fitzgerald put use to Blackmagic products to record a theatre production. With the assistance of Artistic Executive Director, Emily Dix of Bygone Theatre in Toronto, they coordinated and live-streamed the production “The Yellow Wallpaper” where a woman is put into isolation by her husband who is a physician. As she continues to look at the yellow wallpaper in the room she’s in, it slowly causes her to lose her mind. As someone currently writing this article in a place with yellow painted walls, I should really consider relocating and/or buying some paint to make it a better colour before I lose my mind. Or maybe I lost it long ago? Whatever.
Based on a classic short by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and filmed in Campbell House Museum, it was one of the more interesting productions that allowed audience members to actually walk along through the house and tour it in a search for unique elements. Speaking of unique elements, there are quite a few that went into making this.
Well, I spoke to both Conor and Emily regarding their production and they told me about what happened behind the scenes and the benefits of equipment and how easy it was to operate. I found it relatively easy to write and transcribe this whole thing, and you’ll find it easy to read, I’ll bet. Stay seated for the entire performance- I mean, interview and enjoy the facts as they pour out.
HNMAG: Instead of shooting a film, you filmed a theatre production as a livestream. What inspired you to do so?
Emily Dix: We’re a theatre company so we do live theatre but when the pandemic started, it wasn’t possible to do theatre for quite a while. The Canada Arts Council made a grant called Digital Now and that was meant specifically for theatre artists to do something that combined live performance and live streaming. So we applied for that grant, we got it, we’d seen a lot of plays that have been put on in somebody’s living room and were really badly filmed. We didn’t want to do something like that, we were going to try and film a play. There had to be a reason to film it, we wanted to take advantage of the digital elements and so we want to have that high-quality equipment and make the digital element like a part of the story.
HNMAG: And how did you get the cameras to operate via livestream? Are they connected to a certain device?
Conor Fitzgerald: We used both the Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Pro and Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Plus, and we had them connected up to a Blackmagic ATEM SDI Extreme ISO. The beauty of the ATEM SDI Extreme ISO is that it can bring in the camera feeds, bringing them all together. We could switch them to USB-C port on the ATEM, we just connected directly to a computer and it is read as a webcam. For our purposes, that was really easy because we ended up using Zoom to showcase it. Being able to use any platform was super nice but one thing that was also nice about having this exact slate of equipment was that there were other ways that we could’ve done it. There are internal processes using Ethernet cables, that could’ve just generated API codes that could’ve been used with YouTube or Vimeo or something like that. We didn’t end up doing that, didn’t suit our needs, but I appreciated having access to a variety of options that let us play with a workflow that made it easier to find the solutions that we needed.
HNMAG: Could you elaborate on those solutions and options?
Conor Fitzgerald: As we were testing, we ended up using Zoom just because it was the most familiar and we thought it’d be the most familiar to our audiences after 2 years of pandemic. That’s what ended up making us choose it, but we were looking at a variety of different live-streaming options including things that do over-the-top platforms. Vimeo has an option where you can do it a bit more like a webinar or you can do it more like a OTT, Netflix or that sort of thing. Then there are other ones that are similar like YouTube as well where you can input PI so just a code that comes directly from the ATEM and the software included allows you to directly stream. If we only had one option, then the choice would be made for us. We wouldn’t have been able to think about how to best reach an audience and utilize the equipment. With all the choices, it helped me explore how the audience interaction would be.
HNMAG: While doing the livestream, was there any interesting feedback and comments from viewers?
Emily Dix: Yeah! Despite us saying it was live, a lot of people didn’t seem to realize it was live which I guess speaks to the quality and production of the live switching because we were in a very small space. We had this room where the actor only had a 6 by 8-foot size stage because we need so much space to have a rear projector set up the wallpaper. I was squeezed up against the wall with all the tech and had to cue the actor and do the live-switching AND communicate with people through Zoom. It still went very smoothly and I’m a theatre director, I haven’t gotten a ton of experience with tech stuff but being able to see on my screen what all the different camera angles were was very easy to cut and follow the action like you would in a film but live. I guess it was a compliment and a little funny that people didn’t realize it was live and some of the people that went through the house as well assumed it was all pre-recorded.
HNMAG: After this experience, would you like to see about shooting an actual movie?
Emily Dix: Yes. I wouldn’t be too bygonist, this is a theatre company but I’ve always been interested in film. I have worked somewhat in film and TV but not as closely with cameras. I’ve always wanted to direct film, I’m working on a couple of documentaries at the moment but I’ve always wanted to do a feature-scripted film. While I have a lot of directing experience with actors, I didn’t think I had the technical know-how to direct a film. But seeing how intuitive the equipment is and just how easy it is to plan and operate, I feel much more confident now with a DOP I could hold my own and be able to explain what I want.
HNMAG: Blackmagic Design Studio Cameras have lots of benefits, such as colour depth, and correction. How did that play into showing the colours of the set?
Conor Fitzgerald: The Yellow Wallpaper which is the title, is definitely a key part of the show. It is very much described to be a very sickly and specific yellow that’s key to the journey of the actor as an element of colour. We didn’t just want to show it through the wallpaper but we kind of wanted to go through every aspect of the image. It’s a small room and we had to light the performers so that they could be seen, but also back-projecting this yellow wallpaper onto a white screen. Normally using film lights, they cancel each other out because you have very bright lights in both directions. But what I really noticed using the Blackmagic Design Studio Cameras was that because they have that fantastic sensor and those camera controls and they have so much to work with we were really able to explore lighting and explore how to get the right colours to come into the sensor and distribute it out as we wanted them to. Not only that, but because we had to have some of that low flat lighting that didn’t interact with the back projection, we had to play with the gain of the image as well. We were able to do it without much noise in the image because of how that camera is made. It’s just easy.
Emily Dix: It’s a good sensor for low light.
Conor Fitzgerald: I can’t stress how easy it was to setup and all that was so important for a small team.
HNMAG: It’s also very easy to manage and operate. Would somebody with little to no experience be able to operate a camera like this?
Emily Dix: Definitely. The camera and the switcher both. The last time I ran a switcher was in high school and we were using some old thing the teacher had from the 80’s. I was behind on the tech of today, but learned to work it very quickly. The cameras were easy as well.
Conor Fitzgerald: They’re basically plug-and-play. You have to make them sing like an instrument and have a deep understanding of some of the film qualities. But honestly setting it up, there’s the large touchscreen, all of the controls are right there, and it kind of coaches you through internally how to set it up. Something that’s unique to the studio cameras is they have colour adjustment knobs. You have this combination of being able to go really in-depth with your settings if you want to, but also just being able to play with things and make it the image you want. It’s so true that using the large touchscreen will show exactly what the image is going to look like. I would say that it’s the easiest and most intuitive camera I’ve ever used.
HNMAG: And with the compact and portable design, what kind of angles and shots were you able to capture?
Emily Dix: That ended up being a lot more important than we initially expected it to be because the space we were originally in was a lot smaller than anticipated. More than half of it was used up as space just to get the rear projection to work right. It was really handy having cameras that were specifically small and lightweight, we had one that was suspended above the bed and the actor. We needed something that we knew had no chance of falling on her, that could give a big clear image but also be out of the way in other shots so you couldn’t see it. We also had one that was placed under the bed at a low angle, and then we had one that was turned vertically/portrait orientation because that image being projected in the house was through a window. Basically, it was lined up and we didn’t have to go through a whole lot of work. We just turned the camera and it was in the right shape.
HNMAG: So the shots were stationary or did you do a bit of movement?
Emily Dix: We kept them stationary because of the room and how small the team was. It made more sense.
HNMAG: It’s also my understanding that the built-in audio mixer allowed changes in audio levels. Just how did it manage to know what sounds to pick up?
Conor Fitzgerald: I think one of the really nice things about the ATEM system and software control is that you have the inputs from each camera and you also have auxiliary inputs on the ATEM. On the Blackmagic Studio 4K Pros, each of them has 2 XLR ports and we ended up with two overhead mics, two floor mics, and basically with all the places we were able to plug it in, we could utilize that many different mics. We were originally planning to use a lav but there was too much interference with the place being an old building. I really appreciated the ability to set up this audioscape and ATEM software control to select which audio inputs were muted and which weren’t and then set the levels which were broad room tones and some were a bit more directive in capturing what the actor was saying.
HNMAG: There are also transition features, what are they and how did they work to allow a smooth flow?
Conor Fitzgerald: The standard is just a straight cut, but you can also fade, program swipes and those sorts of things. In this particular show, we weren’t using too many more of the creative transitions I would say. We stuck to cutting because it’s the way the storytelling progressed.
Emily Dix: Except for the ending. It just fades.
Conor Fitzgerald: Yeah, the other great thing was the macro function. The ATEM switcher and the ATEM software control allowed to record basically keystrokes to what you were doing. For us because we were both live-streaming and projecting at the same time on the exact same feeds, we needed a way to end the show. It was an issue we didn’t really think of going into it. I was able to program a macro that switched all of the outputs to the same feed and then mute all the audio, then start a fade to black. Rather than having to mix and mash a bunch of different keystrokes, it’s one button and it’s end-of-show. Everything works smoothly, and it was a real life-save action.
HNMAG: And how was the technical setup able to record both the switched stream and individual camera streams?
Conor Fitzgerald: This is where I think we kind of thought of an innovative solution. At the end of the day, we had 3 different streams and the great thing about the ATEM SDI Extreme ISO was that it had 8 SDI inputs and 4 SDI outputs. That allowed us to have the camera inputs to the ATEM but also gave us plenty outputs. For us that was really important because there was no way to separate out the screens. Each of the 4 rooms for the live experience in the house had a different camera feed, a 1-to-1 direct. It wasn’t a switched performance in every group. We had the switched performance on the livestream, and then 1-to-1 feeds in the room. Those direct SDI outputs gave us both take in the camera feeds to switch it and output them to the projectors throughout the house. Then to top that all off, the nice thing about the ISO model is that there’s a second USB-C output which we were able to directly plug a hard drive into. It recorded both the switch-stream as well as each individual camera stream. So afterwards, we don’t have to do any additional editing, we have the show as it was performed as well as the additional camera streams. That way if we want to, we can go back and adjust it for when we put it up on YouTube or otherwise use it.
Sounds like it was a great experience and a fun time was had by all. Too bad I wasn’t there to watch any of it, but I’m sure they’ll have another production out soon and I can’t wait to see what they do next.