NBA Bubble Pt. 1 - Hologram
In the end of July, I got the call to head down to Orlando and shoot in the NBA Bubble. I was pretty excited since the last 5 months had been pretty silent and devoid of shoots. Did a lot of house projects, hung with the fam, and played a lot of video games, but it was time to get back to work.
I was told I’d be doing a pretty interesting shoot with a hologram for AT&T, interviewing players in the bubble with talent outside the bubble. Unfortunately, there would be no audio op, so I invested in a pretty ok audio kit that would supply the 3 cameras I’d have to set up. After countless phone calls and Zoom meetings, I headed down to Orlando to begin quarantine.
After one final Zoom call, I checked into the hotel, got a safty briefing, and headed to my room and got comfortable. Of course I brought my Xbox and reactivated my World of Warcraft account to get me through the days in my room. I absolutely filled it with gear and had to get a bed removed to fit everything. We weren’t allowed to leave except to get COVID tested every day. The hotel staff would bring us 3 meals a day, dropped at the door with a quick knock.
Set up on my desk. Yes I’m good at Overwatch. And the before I got the bed removed from my room.
After a week of testing negative, I was able to go out into the world, talk to people, get to work. The smell of fresh air was, blocked by my mask, but the sun felt great. I lugged all my gear to our room and began to set up the hologram.
The hologram was simple; a projected image onto a screen (like a window screen). The challenge was getting it to look as real as possible. Since no one had ever done this before, it took us a while to figure out the best way to set lights and cameras. Day one, we spent 12hrs tweaking with our producer back in ATL on a Zoom call. We got it close and called it day. On day 2, we got it near perfect - flying in a light over the screen, uplighting the background to wash out the image from the wide shot. It actually came together and was something airable.
My audio kit before the shoot. Test lighting we didn’t end up using. Me talking to producer in ATL.
We started to bring in players who would speak to talent back in ATL or LA depending on the client. Every day we had to adjust the eyeline to make it look like the hologram was looking at the real person. It all went pretty smooth with a couple hiccups on audio, but all major systems were a go! Every day I broke down cameras and brought them to my room.
We did this dance for about 2 weeks. This was probably the closest I’ve ever been to having a job with set hours and got pretty comfortable in the routine, not gonna lie! Once the time there was up, we packed the room and got ready for the next few weeks working the finals.
Check part 2 for what it was like living on campus!