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We’re honored and flattered that so many people are curious about our production methods and creative decisions.  So here’s the behind-the-scenes look at what went into filming the Bill Hybels/Jack Welch interview that’ll air at Willow Creek’s Global Leadership Summit in August.

Jack Welch wasn’t available to be at the Leadership Summit in person, so the interview had to be filmed in advance.  The planning team agreed early on that a one-on-one interview just wouldn’t have the same dynamics as an audience.  So that provided a little bit of a conundrum—the pre-taped interview needed to be “exclusive content” for the Leadership Summit, but it had to be done with a live studio audience.

We believed that with lighting and a shallow field, we could create an intimate event that would still feel exclusive when it was played back later in the summer at the Leadership Summit.  But there were all kinds of considerations.  For example, shooting with traditional 2/3” videocameras would necessitate 15 or 20 feet of space between Jack and the audience, which was’t realistic at all.  The audience needed to be as close as possible—and we needed to see them (or our viewing audience would be terribly disconnected) but not be distracted by them.

So the whole thing was a delicate balance of audience positioning, lighting, aperture/focus field, microphone and speaker placement where a slight change in one impacted everything else.

We also had to shoot the interview near Jack’s home, so we settled on the multi-purpose room of his church—First Presbyterian Church in North Palm Beach, Florida.  The fact that it was a big, open white room with direct sunlight and no rigging points were easy challenges to solve compared to the complicated audience equation.

Cameras

Despite the audio challenges, twelve-minute file size limit, no remote monitoring, and lack of timecode and studio controls, we settled on Canon 5DmkII cameras.  We knew that despite all of the challenges, the cameras would give us the right look.  A wired Clear-Com helped us keep each other posted on stops & re-starts.  And we spent a lot of time with stand-ins rehearsing angles & watching each other’s footage so that we could get by without someone in the traditional director’s role.

In addition to producing, I ran Jack’s camera (70-200mm), Ty covered Bill (70-200mm) and Corbyn hit a two-shot and moved in on Jack when he addressed the audience (24-105mm).  Chris ran camera four—a slow-moving dolly (24-105mm), and Nick picked up wide shots of the room & creative angles with camera five.  Nick had his pick of lenses, including the 300mm prime you see here:

A big thanks to Randy Coleman, our set photographer, who captured these & many more amazing shots.

Audio

Two wired Sanken COS-11s lavalier microphones would have been simple enough on their own, but the audience necessitated a small PA system, PLUS the 20-minute Q&A session after the interview.  So two wireless handheld microphones and the two lavs were routed into our Yamaha DM-1000 digital console which provided a mix to the overhead PA system, as well as a matrix to the hard disc recorder.  The handhelds were mixed down to one channel, plus an AKG 414 overhead ambient mic were all recorded onto four discreet channels of a Sound Devices 744T.

The omnidirectional characteristics of the COS-11s microphone make them a great choice for a studio lav, but quite a challenge when there’s a 360-degree sound field (four Meyer UPM speakers, hung from the pipe grid).  But Chris balanced all of the requirements & made it sound great.

Simple XLR-to-mini plug adapters allowed us to connect reference audio to all of the cameras except for Nick’s (which is why he’s using the Rode VideoMic).  And the Final Cut Pro adjunct program PluralEyes synchronized the audio perfectly.

Lighting

I knew from my initial site survey that we’d need to create a ground-supported pipe grid, and that we’d have to rely on the small handful of 20 amp circuits available to us.  Even if we had more power available, I don’t know that we would have wanted to use it—the air conditioning needed to stay at it’s lowest fan speed throughout the shoot.  KinoFlo 4’ fixtures with half 3200 and half 5600 lamps were used on the audience.  A 1K Chimera pancake was hung between Jack and Bill, while a combination of 4’ and 2’ KinoFlo fixtures at 3200 degrees provided their 4-point studio lighting.

Prior to our arrival, the staff at First Presbyterian installed blinds in all the windows, which gave us the perfect amount of blue glow from the white walls in the background.

Most importantly, the content that we captured is amazing.  Bill and Jack were both at the top of their game & it’s always a pleasure to play a role in helping over a hundred thousand church and community leaders around the world.  A big part of the success was having a wonderful studio audience—they were patient for a full hour as we re-positioned them with an eye on backgrounds & angles, they kept up the energy throughout, and they asked great questions in the Q&A.  (That’ll be available at the Summit as a “bonus feature” option.)

Thanks to Jimmy, Steve and Corinne at the Willow Creek Association for trusting us with such an important role in helping to produce their content.  This year’s Leadership Summit is shaping up to be the best one yet.  If you haven’t registered yet, here’s the link:  http://www.willowcreek.com/events/leadership/2010/