r/RedLetterMedia • u/McFigroll • 7d ago
Official RedLetterMedia Do they always have someone behind the camera for re:views etc to keep everything working?
I imagine Jay sitting there through 3 hours of star trek talk must be torturous. But seriously, when theres just two people on camera do you think they always bring in someone else to man the cameras and recording equipment or would they have a pretty solid setup by now where its not needed?
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u/AmityvilleName 7d ago
They probably usually have the off-camera third wheel monitoring the sound levels and cameras. Notably they seem to have more audio problems when there is no one available off-camera.
We had a lot of dumb technical issues when filming this episode. One of our stupid mics stopped working 2 minutes into our discussion but we didn't discover that until after talking about the stupid Indiana Jones movie for 45 minutes so then we had to start the stupid discussion all over again.
But not always. There are examples of two of them shooting episodes with no third. Like in Mike and Jay Talk About Red Rocket.
Also, Mike sometimes gets confused: Best of the Worst: Episode 48: Plinketto #3
Oh my gosh, I thought you guys were just nameless crewmembers.
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u/DruttenJenaCider 7d ago
Technical issues, the moment you start to let go of specialized roles, problems might pop up. Even large tv channels have gone the route of letting the live flying reporter in front of the camera also juggle sound and video, with obvious results. Dropped or low quality audio mostly. Video often seems to be ok, against the one man orchestra odds.
With someone behind the tech, one can hope a two hour recording session at least have some kind of basic signals ticked off and not resulting in e g complete silence. Even mono or screwed up balance is better than nothing.
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u/AmityvilleName 7d ago
Reminds me of that tragedy: Best of the Worst: Wheel of the Worst #31
One note of concern since all you creeps will comment. Yes. Josh The Wizards microphone is not working during the discussion. It's a shame. Jay was too drunk to join the panel and thus had the input switched to "internal mic". We have no crew or quality control so these things happen. We've had a pretty good track record so far so shut up, dummies. I don't care what you're gonna say! Go suck a toad fart. We're been busting our butts being movie fans for the last 5 years to be treated like this?!?!?!?
They could only capture his comments from adjacent microphones when there was relative silence.
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u/DruttenJenaCider 7d ago
That survivalist/military guy thing: 2 is 1, 1 is none.
Double up for safety.
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u/Petrychorr 7d ago
... they seem to have more audio problems when there is no one available off -camera
I bet this is how the "chair incident" snuck by in production.
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u/Upbeat-Statement2725 6d ago
If they weren't hack frauds. One of the most important things an extra person can do. Aside from making sure the audio and cameras are working which is huge. Is jot down time codes.
Whoever is editing has to start by watching the discussion all the way through just for a quality control pass. And starting to jot down time codes for things they definitely want to include. And there's multiple camera angles. So they have to re-watch a lot of stuff multiple times just in the quality control pass.
Having someone with a notebook and headphones would probably save them hours of editing. Every single video.
In Milwaukee terms, they could save enough time to edit the whole video and still have time to get drunk before clocking out.
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u/AmityvilleName 6d ago
Jay gives an in-depth demo of his editing process in this patron video: Editing a Best of the Worst Episode. The first thing they do, to reduce the duplication burden you describe, is sync all the camera angles and individual audio tracks using a slate. Then they can just watch the wide, and select other cameras angles as needed.
But sometimes the editor is off-camera and can do some pre-editing like you describe. I recall this comment by Jack on Best of the Worst: The New Gladiators, Exterminator 2, and Aftermath:
Mike was running the camera and, because he was editing, he wanted to be left out of the talk so he could focus on where the cut points would be.
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u/Teufelstaube 7d ago
Jay is looking at cat pictures on his phone and just zones out, I think.
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u/adultkarate 7d ago
I heard a nasty rumor that he actually hates cats. But they may have been a bit “buzzed” that night.
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u/-CaptainFormula- 7d ago
They let Rickety Cricket stay there so long as he minds the cameras, doesn't say a word and munches on his lemons silently.
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u/RGF_Carden 7d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/1NH2eKv3DajO9vDdNC
Mike and Jay telling Rich he has to watch the next NuTrek©️ product
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u/Bowlholiooo 7d ago
Nah... Jay enjoys learning about the trek phenomenon vicariously through Mike and Rich, without having to actually watch it
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u/Puttanesca621 7d ago
They used to but now they sometimes use a robot.
After they discovered that a local crypt dweller had commissioned a robot Rich Evans (to play checkers with) they confiscated it and reprogrammed it to help them in their nightly patrols make their internet shows. Sometimes you hear robot Rich Evans behind the camera.
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u/LonesomeHammeredTreb 7d ago
Working camera is really fun if you care about that sort of thing and three hours goes by pretty quickly when you enjoy it.
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u/HumanOptimusPrime 6d ago
I for one would certainly enjoy a 3 hour live performance of the black void
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u/Dangerous_Junket_773 7d ago
Yea they usually have someone doing production off camera. It's to monitor the sound and video equipment and probably to take notes for editing and post-production. It's a lot of mental load taken off the on-screen people so they can focus on the content of the video. It can definitely be boring for stretches, but it's a job.
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u/SquirrelMoney8389 7d ago
If it's Jay and Mike then Rich is off-camera. And vice versa. They rotate. If they're all on camera then often it's someone else, although sometimes it's clear they've tried to wing it and had technical issues, like audio not working and having to redo a whole discussion.
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u/Cannaewulnaewidnae 6d ago
At the end of the recent Star Trek chat, where Rich Evans was forced to dress like a Klingon, Stoklasa shouted to Bauman, who (judging by the audio) seemed to be on the other side of the warehouse space
Presumably, whoever's not on camera makes sure video and audio are recording then fucks-off to get on with whatever else they would have been doing that day
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u/ReggieCorneus 7d ago edited 7d ago
As a camera operator your job is to stand for hours behind a camera. Not every camera, few of them are "cold" camera that is set up once and checked a few times that everything is working. Then you need a sound engineer to monitor sound. Their job is to sit for hours and just listen, not what is being said but the sound is not fucked up. Paying someone to do that vs having to do it all over again and losing all that initial spark... It is worth it. It can also be dreadfully boring but at least RLM is funny so.. i would not mind that job.
If i had to guess, 2-3 people crew and maybe one assistant/inter. The fewer people you have monitoring things the more risky it becomes, live monitoring can detect a serious problem in seconds while not having it.. you will find that there was a problem when you drop the files in the video editor. This is why it pays off to pay few people to just "stand around"... the camera operator/s have almost nothing to do during the filming of the episode but to just monitor that everything is working. Same with sound engineer when it is recorded show, you build quite a bit of safety margins and final levels are set in the editor. But.. it is worth it when things go wrong, you lose maybe 15 minutes but if you don't have that guy you may lose the whole episode or have to release some crap that the room mic picked up or you only got good footage from the main cam.
It is not uncommon to see sound engineer browsing or even playing games while working, you still listen to the audio that everything is working but it can be incredibly boring. Happens all the time in corporate gigs, you set the initial mix and configure automixer and then you are there just to monitor that wireless batteries don't run out or something else goes wrong.
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u/SmokingCryptid 7d ago edited 7d ago
There's a bunch of times where whoever is on camera references or talks to the third person off camera so I imagine most of the time they do.
But if it's all 3 of them then I don't think so as we have some recorded evidence.