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Starling Project Foundation, Inc.
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Experiments
May 27-30, 2003
Melissa and intern Olivia Johnson went to the local public television station, CET, which had rented its studio to us, to paint its cyclorama a carefully mixed shade of website blue. Melissa tried to avoid chroma-key blue, used for TV weather maps. Nevertheless, it took until the next shoot to get the shade right. This first time was experimental.  DP Mike Bizzarri brought in his lights and camera. The camera package was On Location's Panasonic High Definition variable frame rate cinema camera. Although On Location most frequently shoots in 24p for a cinematic look, 24p can cause motion blur on fast-moving subjects. We decided to shoot at 60 frames per second for the most clarity on fast-moving bows and fingers.
Knowing that streaming media has its own artifacts and challenges, we wanted to start with the fastest frame rate and highest resolution available. Also, because we occasionally planned to show some techniques in slow motion, we wanted 60 fps as a foundation for optimal slow motion later.
Audio designer Tom Haines arrived with recording engineer Brian Niesz. Together they rigged two systems: stereo mics for recording music and a shotgun mic for speaking.
 We began shooting with my on-camera definition segments rolling through a teleprompter. Earlier, I had prepared the text and rehearsed it; and since English is my second language, I had asked a friend, journalist David Schoenbaum, to proofread. Reading into a teleprompter and making it sound spontaneous was more difficult than I had anticipated.
After examining the results of the first day, we decided to switch to a less didactic, slightly off-camera, and more interview-like approach.
On Wednesday, we filmed the first exercises, boldly blazing into the 'master class' concept as a mini-lesson. Already anticipating long download times, we tried to limit each lesson to three minutes or less. But, each 3-minute clip took about an hour to film. We began with master shots of the exercises until we got the definitive best takes.
Then we repeated the exercise so the team could get close-ups of each person in the segment and finally extreme close-ups of the details that would be most instructive. All this required constant changes of camera angle, microphone placement, and lighting. Mike and Melissa quickly became expert at finding the best possible angles to show certain left or right hand motions.
Coordinating the technical details with my speaking and outstanding playing only looks easy. Starling faculty Brittany MacWilliams acted as the 'straight bow police' making sure that good violin playing technique was very clear in the monitor. It took several takes to get it all.
 Thursday was our first master class day. We brought a Steinway Grand into the studio and began the first of many discussions about where the piano should go. A large black piano can take up a lot of screen space and requires many lights. But finally, like in any other master classes, we had our piano and could hear complete musical phrases.
On Friday, we transformed the studio into a performance venue. The lighting was expressionistic amber and the atmosphere was purple. At this point, version one of the website interface was purple, so it made sense. Later, after the website settled into our signature blue and orange, we discarded the purple, even though many of us still like the results of that day.
We ended up using nearly all our experiments on the website, despite the variation in color. If the kids played well, we used it.
Summer 2003
Post-production began in early June. First, the On Location team logged the tapes, a task that took almost as long as actually shooting. This is where the producer and assistants chose the selects, made sense of the footage, and gave each shot a unique name that could be interpreted by the editor.
During the shoot, a production assistant had written down the time code of the good takes, but it still needed to be unraveled in the dark viewing room and coded into MediaLog. Then the selects were loaded into the editing system (G4 Mac with HD Final Cut Pro). In Mid-June, editor Jeff Glaza began editing the first of what would be 170 segments.
Usually we based the structure of every segment on a wide master shot. Then we inserted medium shots and close-ups to show the details. Sometimes we took audio and video from different takes. We found that Tessa Lark had incredibly steady tempi we could take a 30-second moment of audio from another of her takes, and it would synchronize without a hitch.
One day of shooting easily became two days of editing. Jeff, who had been nominated for an Emmy for editing Classical Quest, soaked up violin technique terminology as he developed an ear for the subtleties of violin repertoire and an eye for bow continuity. The footage was easy to work with.
We were very happy with the picture quality and camera work of Mike Bizzarri and the audio production of Tom Haines.
After the first clips had been edited, sifted through, and finally approved, the audio files were delivered to Tom Haines. Tom sweetened each file and returned them to Jeff, who replaced them onto each clip. Jeff then began the first of many experiments to stream the media at the most optimal rate.
Clay had already created a test site to upload the files and we scrutinized our first attempt. Then, everybody went back to the drawing board and adjusted - audio approaches, lighting approaches, streaming approaches, directorial approaches - in preparation for the next shoot. 
Mid-summer brought Sarah Tennison as a production intern and design assistant. Sarah had an intuitive sense of design and went to work developing the inner pages based on Joe's design and Melissa's flowchart. She added complexity with layers and spent considerable time experimenting with layout.
The result was a gorgeous look that could speak to children, teens, and adults. As the content demands grew, so did the inner design, to a logical and elegant form.
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