"Live with the B" done kicked my ass!  Our Top 40 station, B94, just staged its own reality show called "Live with the B."  This was the second year for this event with our Morning Show, Midday, Afternoon and Night personalities all paired up with listeners and lived under one roof for five days.  The premise is like Big Brother meets the Real World meets the Biggest Loser: Couples.  Last year's videos were lacking in that the person charged with creating them wasn’t very efficient.  So armed with three Flip Video Cameras, a trio of Tripods, an MP3 recorder and my laptop, I took it upon myself to tell the story of "Live with the B" for those who weren’t following along either on the radio or via the four streaming webcams.

My preparation involved creating a few animations first: A video open/close with the major sponsor logos featured prominently, an “Elimination Nomination”, an Elimination Stager, a Challenge Stager and a Winner Stager.  I also tried to do an animated logo screen bug that flipped between the B94 logo and the contest logo. 

I figured that each day I would produce three videos: a challenge (rewarding one team with internet privileges to help their cause), the nomination, and the elimination.  One element missing from last year’s "Live with the B" was a “confessional” video where each participant gave their opinion on how the game was going and what they thought of the other players.  So I added this fourth video to the mix, basically dividing the day with 2 videos in the morning and two in the afternoon. 

There were a few added bonuses with pranks and late night shenanigans documented by the air staff overnight.  I would edit those videos together as quickly as I could the next morning.  There were also activities (set up by sales of course) that made the group participate together: an exercise boot camp, karaoke, self-defense training that provided some good content for the site.

Trying to accomplish this video production all on location proved to have some challenges.  The first challenge is our Web Video Player.  In order to upload them to our web site, I have to first send them to an FTP server.  However, that server is behind the corporate firewall and only accessible if I’m in the building or have a VPN (Virtual Private Network).  I attempted to obtain one but the only person in our company that handles it was on vacation when I applied and would not return until the contest was over.  Thankfully the house was only a few miles from the radio station, so there would be a short delay in posting the videos.

The next challenge I faced was getting good, clean audio to match my video.  Normally when I shoot studio work, I grab the air feed from the station’s digital logger.  Since I was producing these on the fly at the location, I had to improvise.  The ISDN box we used had a line out that I was able to plug in my MP3 recorder.  Unfortunately the line out had a tendency to be overloaded with some of the more boisterous members of the air staff were on mic, so I had to use some click & crackle removal plug-ins to compensate.  Still I had everyone on mic and quality was better than straight camera audio.

As I review the body of work I produced over the course of the five days of the show, I feel like I did surpass the quality of last year’s event.  However, because I didn’t spend as much time with each video as I normally do, I feel that I left something on the table.  But, in five days, to edit down 120 video files into 24 multi-camera stories about 5 DJs & 5 Listeners, picked to live in a house and have their lives broadcast to find out who can "Live with the B", I think I did okay.  Judge for yourself.  See the entire volume of work at www.youtube.com/DrakeDonovan.