Adam Grandy

Hi, I’m Mike with UGtastic. I’m standing here at Windy City Rails with Adam Grandy who does the, I did say that right, thank you. Adam Grandy who does the audio video at Windy City Rails and you’ve been doing it for a couple years. And can you just say a little bit about like how long you’ve been doing the video and how has, how is making sure that you get good quality video over the last few years? I mean, has that been something that’s changed a lot since you first got involved? Yeah, I’ve been with Chicago Ruby and Windy City Rails for about three years since 2009 and it has been evolution. It’s something that I’ve been excited about. I’m real passionate about live productions. It’s a great opportunity to get involved. We’ve evolved the quality of the production throughout the years and a lot of that just comes from things that we’ve learned year over year from conference to conference. Certainly the more you do something, the better you get. You get at it if you’re kind of looking for ways to improve upon it. And that’s really the philosophy that we have here. From me and from the organizer Ray, it’s again kind of the thing that we espouse and what we’d like to do. Now, if somebody is looking to do like recording of their own user group, you know, I’ve had a great success with just having a MacBook and a photo booth. But somebody wants to do, do you have any suggestions for like… A simple way to get nice, good, clean audio? Sure, sure. Yeah, audio is a couple of things. Number one, it’s going to depend on the mic that you use, your micing technique, and then, you know, your recording and what not. Right. So for Chicago Ruby and Windy City Rails, we’re using a Countryman E6. Okay. It’s about a $300 microphone. It’s widely used in live production, concerts, churches, all kinds of things because it’s a great price point. Delivers fantastic audio and kind of getting back to some of the things that influence the quality of the audio, your micing is important. So, you know, for speaking, your options are either a stationary microphone, a handheld microphone, yeah, exactly, a lavalier microphone, or what I’ll call an ear microphone. So the Countryman is an ear microphone, which means it’s proximity micing, so the mic element is just right… By the mouth. By the mouth and what not, so with the E6, you start off with a phenomenal sound, and then once you kind of send that sound to the recording, again, every, you know… Comes very crisp and clear. Yeah, you know, well, you asked earlier about kind of what influences that audio. Well, we use, you know, a wireless channel, so we’re using Shure equipment and what not, so that’s, for our signal flows, is pretty good, so that’s how we handle that. Okay, and has there been anything that’s been like a… A real big surprise, would like, that you might think it’d be a common, was there something maybe you had a common assumption about, oh, we’re going to, we have to have this kind of audio for, that you’ve learned didn’t work quite the way you thought it would, or… Yeah, you know, assumptions are common, and they can actually, you know, you think one thing and another thing happens, I think, especially when you talk live production, a lot of things can happen, and that’s where doing things regularly and kind of… kind of knowing what you’re doing really helps. I don’t know that I could put my finger on any real, one assumption that’s been hard for us. I think as it relates to user groups, what we’ve found is if you’re recording the user group, audio or video with the intent of distributing it for people to view or listen to, usually for user groups you’re working with volunteers or whatnot like that. So what we try and do is we try and do our production as close to the actual user group as possible. So when we record a video, we wanna edit it and upload it that day, because that decreases the time when people become less motivated and like, oh, well, we’ll just do it next time we meet and things like that. So an assumption for us has been, the quicker we can get to distribution, the better it’s gonna be for everyone.

• Yeah, it’s the swallow the frog kind of thing. It’s gonna be time consuming. It’s gonna be a little painful, and especially if you get a rhythm down to it, that’s probably the biggest thing is that it’s a very machine. It’s very mechanical, that’s what I’m trying to say. Now, the other thing is is that you’re not a developer, but you watch these conferences, and you’ve been doing it for years, and you watch all the speakers get up, and they have their talks. What kind of evolution, have you seen, is it like they just are kind of the same thing every year, or have you noticed that, oh, the style of a presentation is drifting or something like that, that maybe those of us in the audience who are there as developers are just listening to content, maybe not listening to how it’s framed?
• Yeah, I don’t know programmatically if presenters are presenting differently than they have three years ago. I would say there’s a couple of changes year over year. For us, the most basic is the conference has grown, so there’s now more people, which means that we now can have more presenters. That also means that we can also have different types of presenters. So, you’re right, I’m not a developer. I don’t really get too much into the day-to-day coding and whatnot. But I would say beyond kind of very technical things like our spec and whatnot, we’re also getting into kind of more of the management tasks. How do you work with your staff of developers? What are the ways to improve upon that, working as a team and whatnot? So there’s, programmatically, there’s been some new talks that have really, I think, been food for developers and managers that can really improve their practice beyond their technical skills.
• Now, and just one last question is, dealing with Pacers, has that ever been something, there’s a few people that are well-known in the community that like to move that stage. Is that something that’s been a challenge? When I ask it, because it’s something I felt bad for the photographers.
• Yeah, for a camera operator, yeah. It’s not, I don’t think it’s too much of a challenge for me. My background is in live video production, so I’ve got a lot of experience with camera work and whatnot. I’m sure that it can be a challenge for someone who’s maybe new or doesn’t do that regularly. You know, it just comes down to making sure you’ve got the right gear. A fluid head tripod helps you out. Making sure that you kind of understand your framing, your composition. When a person’s walking across the stage and you’re shooting them live with a camera, making sure you give them lead room and whatnot. And then it just comes down to practice. Having done it before, having maybe been coached by someone, those are opportunities that’ll kind of improve your skill.
• Do you ever talk with the speakers and say, “Oh, hey, this is kind of, please kind of stay within this area so we can get a nice clean.”
• I have, I don’t do that too much anymore, just because typically they aren’t following me. They aren’t following it, or it will only marginally improve the quality of the video. Typically, the value we’re gonna get out of that is much less than the value we’d be getting out of solving other problems like lighting. Or, you know, for this conference, we’re using a front projection setup, and so people are walking through the projection, you know. So solving that problem for the future, getting a rear projection screen and whatnot would be an improvement over what we’ve got now, so.
• Okay, well thank you very much for taking the time.
• Yeah, definitely, glad to help.
• And thank you for doing the video.
• Absolutely.