Shifting Liveliness – Assignment One (Part Two)

March 8, 2018 · by · in

PART TWO

In class in week two in small groups, you will investigate some live streaming platforms firsthand. What are the differences and options available? Is it possible to make an unplanned, unrehearsed stream engaging? Can you capture a ‘live moment’. You will then individually write a 250 blog post (min.) about your experience with this streaming platform.

Through today’s class, I found capturing a “live” moment is not as easy as it seems, to be honest – there is a lot of waiting to get that perfect capture or moment live on camera. The most common form of ‘going live’ is probably Twitch (for online gaming) and Periscope (vlogs, Mukbangs, online gaming etc) – Instagram “Live” is somewhat popular, but not as much as I anticipated, hence why we chose Periscope for this assignment.

To make an unplanned, unrehearsed stream engaging: it’s really difficult. In our shoot setup, it was quite crowded, so people came in and blocked the frame, moved into view etc. Thus, just from a perfectionist perspective, I found this really frustrating (the opposite “surprise element” to a live that you usually want) because I wanted the perfect angle and view to capture all the shots if it was an unmissable moment. From a camera perspective, this could be eliminated in things like a vlog or an online gaming segment because it would just be the person, rather than the event.

We watched a few examples in class about ‘dead-air’ and the authenticity of capturing a live moment: it’s hard to capture it live when it’s happening or your view is obscured. From this exercise, I have gathered why live television shows often prerecord segments before going on live because there are so many undetermined factors in having it played out in front of you, as we experienced through the exercise.

The live video that we recorded was the end of a chess game. It was particularly hard because someone was blocking our view of the two players calling it even and congratulating each other, which would have been the perfect live capture. Thus, it shows that not all live videos go according to plan!