Where's the Bass? The Big Bang Has No Bang!

[SRW1000]

Thankfully, the chit chat was greatly reduced this year, with only minimal interruptions.  The camera work was nice also.

But, why isn't there ever any bass with these presentations?  Is there some kind of technical limitation?  There shouldn't be on the broadcasting end, but maybe in production?  Microphone limitations?  Processing equipment?

I just don't get it.

I want my chest to pound, just like in real life (or at least close to it).

Scott

[LoadStar]

Heh - I was just about to start a thread myself.

I do think the lack of bass is indeed a microphone limitation. Truth be told, I don't think I can recall a fireworks show on TV that really do a good job of capturing that... somehow I bet that the only way of effectively reproducing the bass at home would be to sweeten it in post-production somehow.

I think it's probably the best broadcast that they've done so far. The camera angles chosen were good, and actually highlighted the star of the show, the fireworks, not the buildings/landmarks like they've done in the past. Patrick and Shelby were mercifully silent through most of the show and let the fireworks do the talking.

I particularly liked the highlighting of Summerfest artists - it's such an obvious idea, it's hard to believe that they haven't done it yet (and no, I'm fairly certain that they haven't). Although, if anything, it really highlighted how few contemporary artists are hitting the fest this year, and how many legacy artists there are. That's not the show's fault, of course!

Technically, it really seemed to go without a hitch, including the news cut-ins at 6 and 10, which too is an improvement over previous years (I clearly remember the 10:00 cut-in last year being a total disaster, but they managed to fix the problem by the actual show broadcast).

If there was one quibble that I had, it's that I'd prefer fixed zooms, rather than the zooming in and out. They had 7 different camera angles available to them, I'd rather they used those to exhibit the different parts of the show. That's just my preference, of course.

No offense to the guys from 10/36, but I was sort of hoping by this point WISN would've been more ready to handle an HD broadcast themselves, that they would've taken advantage of this opportunity to get ready to do an HD newscast. Oh, well.

[VoltronMaximus]

Actually I was surprised and thought the bass was decent. I had a few rumbles and the finale was great. It was no DTS bass but the best Ive  heard for fireworks on tv.

I thought everything this year was improved over last. The music was better and they kept it at minimal volume, there was little chit-chat from the hosts, the camera shots were better and the overall picture quality was improved.

If only they would broadcast the South Shore Water Frolics fireworks in HD. The amount of "groundworks" and the "blow up the beach" finale would be the perfect display of fireworks and earth rumbling bass.

[picopir8]

I do not think it was the broadcast, rather the fireworks themselves.

I can usually hear lakefront fireworks quite well where I live but last night heard nothing.  My dog that freaks out during distant fireworks and thunderstorms as far away as madison did not even seem to notice that fireworks were going off.  If I had not  seen the flickering reflection off the clouds last night, I would may have though that the whole thing was prerecorded.

[Jayflap]

No offense to the guys from 10/36, but I was sort of hoping by this point WISN would've been more ready to handle an HD broadcast themselves, that they would've taken advantage of this opportunity to get ready to do an HD newscast. Oh, well.

I think it will be a great while before they will be able to handle a remote of this size on their own. With the fact that when they go HD eventually, it will be dictated by their parent company of Hearst/Argyle which holds the purse strings. They would put that money into the studio setup and and remote vans, but the remote vans would not be equipped to handle that many cameras and audio feeds. It really was/is quite a large setup, and to put money like that into an HD remote truck for a news station would not be financially feasible. Even if they did not get the truck from MPTV, they would still have to rent a remote truck from somebody else and I think that the past history of MPTV/WISN working together makes it a great relationship to work with.

That being said, the WISN crew is a very capable crew and a pleasure to work with. We all left there last night around 12:30 with many of the crew having to be back into work very early, some as early as 5:45am. I got off easy, I didn't have to be back at the station until 2pm.

As for the lowend, even the truck wasn't even getting much shaking from the fireworks. There were several mics placed near the launch point and several placed on top of Discovery World.

Big Kudos to the staff over at WISN, they did a great job that evening and were a fun bunch to work with.

[LoadStar]

I think it will be a great while before they will be able to handle a remote of this size on their own. With the fact that when they go HD eventually, it will be dictated by their parent company of Hearst/Argyle which holds the purse strings. They would put that money into the studio setup and and remote vans, but the remote vans would not be equipped to handle that many cameras and audio feeds. It really was/is quite a large setup, and to put money like that into an HD remote truck for a news station would not be financially feasible. Even if they did not get the truck from MPTV, they would still have to rent a remote truck from somebody else and I think that the past history of MPTV/WISN working together makes it a great relationship to work with.

That being said, the WISN crew is a very capable crew and a pleasure to work with. We all left there last night around 12:30 with many of the crew having to be back into work very early, some as early as 5:45am. I got off easy, I didn't have to be back at the station until 2pm.

As for the lowend, even the truck wasn't even getting much shaking from the fireworks. There were several mics placed near the launch point and several placed on top of Discovery World.

Big Kudos to the staff over at WISN, they did a great job that evening and were a fun bunch to work with.

Fair enough, and a good insight to how things went from the inside. I do have to again compliment everyone involved, it was a very good show this year.

I do have to ask: again this year, the credits referenced "Engineering Services" from WCVB Boston, and this year they also added KCRA Sacramento. You have any inside info as to what they might have contributed?

[Jayflap]

My understanding is that those two stations listed are stations also in the Hearst/Argyle family. I believe that they may be already HD and helped out in facilitating the event with some of the equipment WISN used in the pre-produced packages that aired during the 5, 6 and 10 o'clock news.

I cannot say that is for certain the case, but from some of the conversations I heard during the day, I believe that is the case. I do know that the first year they did the fireworks in 2006 they did get the camera from another station which I believe was WCVB.