Weighing up the positives against the negatives
The event
I did a funeral livestream during the week. The first one in quite a while.
Many things went horribly wrong, most of which are out of my control and due to circumstances, but one still feels responsible for delivering poor-quality service.
The visual footage of the live stream was okay while the audio was horrible.
Leading Up to the Event
I got little opportunities to livestream funerals and other sports events. Since I started charging for my service, I barely get any jobs. If it wasn't for the Sunday LMS cricket livestreaming and commentating, I would have had no other source of income.
Even at LMS Cricket, we suffer constant technical challenges with their app not working properly, which led me to focus on creating footage for the sponsors in the form of alternative footage from my own equipment.
The negative from this is that when a Gazebo was picked up by a gust of wind and smashed into my video camera, both pieces of my equipment were damaged. The gazebo I was able to fix it, but my video camera is a goner. My primary camera is for livestreaming funerals and other sports.
Finances are tight and I barely recovered from the previous break the LMS league took, so there isn't enough money for additional equipment and even less to drive around if I can avoid it.
The job
Finally, I got a call for a funeral livestream. Just my luck and I'm desperate for every cent I can earn. It is a funeral service at a church and a burial. They want footage from both on separate videos.
The Initial Problem
So the obvious problem is that I have a gig, but my equipment isn't in working condition. Taking a step back, it is simply solved by renting equipment to take the place of the broken ones and I can keep my reputation as reliable with good and affordable service. Even though I only get R1500 for the job, and the equipment rental costs R1000, at least I get to keep R500 with my reputation intact. A simple solution to an immediate problem, right?
Wrong
In hindsight, this created more problems than simply not taking the job. I got to use a brilliant camera, a Black Magic 4K which is a lot better than my broken video camera. Sounds like a great opportunity to work with professional equipment, even if I don't make as much out of the deal financially. Being positive in every situation right? I'm on medication so work with me here.
The problem comes in when challenges come up. For one, the BlackMagic doesn't seem to be compatible with my capture card and the footage doesn't get into my laptop. I tried and researched everything I could nearly the entire night I had before the event to figure out what I was doing wrong and why it wasn't working.
I arranged with the person renting me the BlackMagic to use his ATEM mini to capture and send the footage to my laptop. On my way to the church, I collected it from him the next morning.
I feel a bit frustrated because, in the little time that I had to make last-minute preparations for the gig, I had to figure out technical problems which I usually don't have to while load shedding also stole a little over two hours of my prep time. All I could hope for is that the ATEM mini will solve my problem.
At the church, the ATEM mini did solve my visual feed problem, but now I didn't have time to improve the footage by researching and playing with the settings. So I have to deal with what I have.
08:00 I was supposed to get the slideshow from the client while the service started at 10:00. The client brought it at 09:15 and I was able to do some sound checks in the church with their equipment attached to mine. Everything seems to be in order, but the program changed a little. No Biggie as I'll make adjustments on the fly.
All isn't as well as I thought
The camera footage which I prepped before the service froze, but from experience, I knew how to fix it. A new problem though, I don't hear the audio from the church on my equipment, but the meters indicate that it is there. I've created some custom settings in my streaming software for optimal audio quality which doesn't clip and deliver great quality sound. I've tested it at home and it worked excellent.
Obviously, my not hearing the footage is some form of glitch in the program which happens pretty often, so I need to trust the meters since they are optimized and worked well at home.
The visuals aren't brilliant, but I'm happy to add my phone's footage as a network cam to the mix which looks pretty good if I had to say so myself.
I hear no sound from my laptop but it is there, so I tried the sound from my mixer. I'm glad that I've placed my condenser mic in front of the church. The sound isn't great, but it does pick up the speakers. I don't hear the footage coming from the church as tested before the service, so I need to trust the equipment.
37 minutes into the service, I got the idea to listen to the footage being delivered to YouTube and it sounds horrible. It is a mix of church-captured audio and my microphone-captured audio. Immediately I turned down my microphone and the sound from the church came through somewhat average quality. The signal is so poor that my mixer doesn't pick it up, but the streaming software does. I listened to the YouTube broadcast, and although I hear the church's current billowing sound through the speakers, I can hear that the sound on YouTube isn't a mix anymore and only a single channel.
Making Improvements Where I Can
At home, I could see that the service livestream was a disaster. I took the entire Thursday to fix the backup footage and re-upload it to YouTube, but I can only improve some of the audio, even if it's just a fraction. The mistakes that I made with the visuals I could fix.
Client Report
The client is twofold. One, the family who paid for the Livestream and the Funeral Parlour who trusted me with this gig. They were both unhappy with my product and made it clear that they were disappointed.
My Report
I know I could have delivered a better product in different circumstances, but they accumulated in such an order that it was the best I could do at the time.
Lessons Learned
It is frustrating that one has to make mistakes to learn from. It seems that I need to make every mistake there is, even if I'm uncertain whether I can do this in four months. I have another opportunity that seems to be panning out better.
It isn't wise to use rental equipment you're unfamiliar with, especially if your reputation is on the line. Having limited time to get familiarized with it could have been better spent doing checks to improve the quality of the product.
Renting the equipment experience wasn't a complete waste. I met a fellow storyteller with access to much more sophisticated equipment and staff. Hopefully, we can develop a relationship which will assist in me making my dream documentary one day or at least become familiar with a professional filmmaking environment.
Although my streaming software "OBS Studio" constantly has updates which make some tested features incompatible at times, for now, I learned how to monitor the audio separately from my mixer and found a feature where I can hear the sound being sent to YouTube only. I feel it should improve my audio challenge.
Maybe take more control of the audio feed from the church since the operator usually isn't familiar with their equipment's additional functions. This might cost investment capital, but let's see how many opportunities will arise in the future which will make the investment feasible.
Maybe the biggest lesson of them all. Don't deviate from tried and tested preparation procedures to accommodate the client. They are disappointed by my product and the funeral parlour representative too, so I might not get a gig from them again. It is better to decline a job when everything is not already in place than to tarnish your reputation to please everyone trying to do it. It is good to push your boundaries but rather stay within your limitations when your reputation is on the chopping block. Future gigs might be influenced by your failures, especially weddings and funerals as you're capturing a moment which cannot be recaptured at a later stage.
Audio seems to be more important than visuals, or it may maybe the focus since its quality was so bad.
It became even more important to look at investing in noise cancelling headphones so that the noise on location doesn't influence monitoring the sound being checked for quality from the equipment. This will be expensive, but if future jobs warrant the investment, go for it along with fixing the video camera.
Conclusion
Yes, I've failed the client and my reputation through this experience. It is a moment in the client's life which cannot be recaptured, but more lessons were learned than on other occasions when things seemed to have gone smoother.
Yes, I'm even more disappointed in myself than by the customer. Probably a bit embarrassed too since it seems that I always have excuses for other's functions not being up to par with what I expected. It is possible that the church's audio was sabotaged involuntarily since the person working with it wasn't a sound technician. Still, it seems that the audio problem is becoming a recurring issue. I feel that the way to solve this challenge is to take more control over the sound, even if it means taking over the operator's function. It could be worthwhile in the future to up the prices which covers the cost of hiring a sound engineer to take care of the audio.
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