Roger Bansemer
Four years ago Roger & Sarah Bansemer decided they wanted to share their experiences of painting and travel on a PBS television series. Roger, an accomplished painter and author, along with Sarah, who sets the itinerary and acts as host and interviewer for the show, set out with their small RV to find out-of-the-way locations. Their adventure has taken them to lighthouses, Amish farms, old mines, and even unusual events such as Burning Man in Nevada where they filmed two shows.
They write: "We find a location we like, get permissions, set up our cameras and easel, and begin what becomes about an 18 minute painting demonstration, once edited. In the other part of the show, Sarah tours and interviews people from the area with Roger behind the camera. It provides a wonderful back-story about the painting and gives the viewer more perspective."
Sony Creative Software: What's a typical shoot like, and what's your workflow?
Roger: Let's say we're in Arizona at the Wupatki National Monument, where the remains of a 900 year old pueblo sits in the vastness of the Painted Desert. We shoot with three Sony cameras running as I paint. And let's also say that during the painting sequence we notice a Native American from the Hopi Indian tribe walking down the trail. We then switch gears and Sarah gets an interview and a personal tour of the pueblo where his ancestors lived so many years ago. So it's all pretty much done on the fly.
We do all our own filming using Sony cameras exclusively. Back in the studio, we use Sony Vegas Pro 10 64-bit to get the program to its finished state. Editing may be the most exciting and fascinating part of the entire process. Vegas Pro is very organic, kind of like painting. It doesn't lock me into a set workflow and allows me to be creative and jump around much the same way as I paint. It's quick, requires no render time when changes are made on the timeline and, after working with it for years starting with Sony Vegas 7, it is almost like becoming a master of the Rubik's cube. A bit daunting at first but once in the flow of things, tossing around clips to appropriate locations on the timeline no longer becomes a challenge but more of an enjoyable game where the finished product gets brought to life.
SCS: That's a lot of work for only two people.
Roger: Sarah and I admire the "Survivor Man" series and find it an inspiration in many ways. Now we consider ourselves the Survivor series of painting and travel, as it's strictly a two-person operation when it comes to locations, directing, shooting, and editing. A total experience of artistic freedom which, as expected, comes with its share of hardships. It's been a huge learning curve as neither one of us has had any experience in producing a series for television but so far we've filmed and edited thirty programs.
Fortunately, John Rofrano, who is a moderator of the Creative Cow Vegas Forum and a published author and trainer for VASST, agreed to be our finishing editor. He also fills in the technical gaps that someone like me with no real prior editing experience can expect. He really keeps me out of trouble when it comes to delivering the show for broadcast. Both the Creative Cow Vegas Forum and Sony's Vegas Pro Forum are wonderful places to find answers to those hard to answer questions about technical issues.
SCS: Do you rely on other features in Vegas Pro?
Sony Vegas Pro 10 has helped us tremendously to keep our production costs to a minimum. We take full advantage of the new closed captioning feature. Through the use of a fabulous plug-in that John Rofrano wrote for VAAST called "Caption Assistant", we can easily caption our entire show in real time. The plug-in allows us to put our transcript into what basically looks like a word processor. I break up the sentences in appropriate blocks or at the ends of sentences and then begin watching the Vegas preview window. I listen to myself or Sarah say the sentence, at the same time watching the manuscript to be sure the text matches the actual spoken words. At the end of the sentence, I hit the space bar and "Bang!", it inserts my caption on the timeline at the beginning of the sentence, right where it's supposed to be, making the job seem more like a fun video game than work. It's really incredible to be able to take our raw footage and bring it to total completion including captioning.
Another aspect of Sony Vegas Pro that helps us is its outstanding audio capabilities. As Sarah and I shot more and more shows, we got better and better at our productions. When we went back to edit some of the earlier shows we realized that the audio wasn't quite the same quality as the recent shows. I was able to use the Automated Dialog Replacement (ADR) capabilities of Vegas Pro to replace an entire show's dialog in just one afternoon. The punch-in and punch-out capabilities made it extremely easy to do and we used some natural sounds we captured on location on lower audio tracks to match the environment perfectly. Without Vegas Pro we probably would have had to go into a recording studio to do the replacement. During finish editing, John uses the audio bus capabilities of Vegas Pro when mixing to keep the dialog, music, and sound effects all under control by routing those tracks to their own audio buses. You simply don't have this level of control with other NLEs. He also uses Sony Sound Forge Pro 10 and Sony Noise Reduction 2 for cleaning up some of the on-location audio. Vegas Pro makes it very easy for us to perform color grading, ensuring broadcast safe levels, and mixing audio to match PBS specs.
As you may know PBS requires that all submissions be on HDCAM tape. Vegas Pro allows us to deliver Sony XDCAM HD422 MXF files along with the Closed Captioning files to CaptionMax, who then puts them on HDCAM tape for satellite uplink through NETA (National Educational Telecommunications Association) which is one of the distribution arms for public television. We just couldn't have delivered this show without the power and flexibility that Vegas Pro 10 gave us.
The show was just released in early February to stations nationwide and so far about 26 stations have begun to air it. We think it will grow quite a bit soon as stations find room in their schedules. Be sure to look for the show at your local PBS affiliate.
You can find more about Painting & Travel with Roger & Sarah Bansemer at www.paintingandtravel.com and www.bansemer.com.
