Tutorial: Shooting Top-Quality Streaming Video Part II: Designing Your Set

As your delivery bit rate extends beyond 200Kbps (assuming 320x240 resolution), you can spread your wings a bit. Consider shooting in real offices, even those with lighter backgrounds, if there are paintings and other large objects to break up the open space, and minimal fine detail. When shooting in a real environment, move the subject as far from the background as possible, which increases your ability to blur the background using aperture controls. You can also experiment with lighting the subject, and not the background, which again minimizes detail.

Most importantly, before finalizing your set, shoot some video and run some test compressions at your target encoding parameters. This will reveal any problems while you still have time to address them.

Dressing Your Talent
When analyzing clothing, I looked at the dominant color of the subject’s dress, suit jacket, or shirt (for those wearing no jacket).

While color varied somewhat, solid colors totally predominated videos made for streaming, with 13 of 14 subjects in solid clothing, and the one exception being a woman wearing a black dress with an almost unnoticeable pattern. Blue, gray, and brown were the three predominant colors, with blue taking 5 of 6 videos shot on location.

Not to state the obvious, but whatever color you choose should contrast with the background. The consultant from Deloitte wore a gray coat against a blue background, and Bill Gates wore a brown sweater against a predominantly blue background. Rob Glaser wore a blue shirt against a blue background—absent good backlighting that produced a thin light on his left shoulder, he would have been almost indistinguishable from the background. All other subjects wore clothing that contrasted quite nicely with the background. I’m guessing that wasn’t an accident; the producers either advised the subjects what to wear or, in the on-location shots, chose backgrounds that provided the necessary color contrast.

For men wearing a coat and tie, a light blue shirt seemed the most favored color. Avoid white when you can, since it creates too much contrast with black or dark blue coats. What’s more, when you’re setting the exposure, a white shirt can make it tough to get a tan face bright enough without totally blowing out the detail on the shirt.

Framing the Shot
There are several things to consider when it comes to correctly framing for the web. First, since streaming video is normally played in a small window, the camera must get "up close and personal" to allow the viewer to see facial expressions and gestures clearly. The smaller the video resolution, the tighter the required framing.

Most web producers we surveyed understood this, with the notable exception of Akamai, which presented its chief scientist in a 160x120 video with loose framing that revealed a spinning globe in the background, making Akamai the only streaming-only producer with motion in the background. Produced at 227Kbps, the quality of each frame was good, but with closer framing and a better choice of background, Akamai could have published a much larger resolution with equal-quality video.

For example, a previously discussed video, which is eight times larger than the Akamai video, and was delivered at 300Kbps, which is only 32% larger than Akamai’s 227Kbps. Clearly, when delivering via the web, it’s best to frame tightly, utilize a compression-efficient background, and deliver as large a resolution as possible at the target data rate.

Another aspect of framing relates to the "safe zone" most TV producers respect when shooting for TV. Briefly, about 15% of each frame on all four edges is lost to "overscan" when played on traditional television sets, so TV producers frame less tightly to ensure that their subjects are visible. They also don’t position titles within the safe zone, lest they not be visible on TV. Obviously, this doesn’t happen when streaming, where every pixel is viewable. This means that you can frame more tightly and place your titles at or near the edges of the video.