TGJ3M · Unit 3 test review

Video Production: Test Review

Everything for the Unit 3 test on one page: the key facts from all 7 lessons, the mistakes that cost the most marks, and a practice test that points you back to the lessons you need.

Key facts

Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning

The three stages are pre-production (planning), production (shooting) and post-production (editing).
Problems are cheapest to fix in pre-production and often impossible to fix in post.
A storyboard shows one drawing per shot; drawing quality does not matter, clarity does.
An animatic is the storyboard cut to time with scratch audio — the cheapest way to test a sequence.
Shoot grouped by location and lighting setup, never in story order.
Coverage means capturing wide, medium, close and cutaway shots so the editor has choices.
B-roll is what covers jump cuts in an interview and makes shortening an answer invisible.
Hold every shot several seconds longer than feels necessary — handles are free on the day.
Release forms are required from identifiable people and property owners before publishing.

Crew Roles and Team Project Management

The producer owns time, money and logistics; the director owns the creative vision; the DP owns the look of the picture.
A Gantt chart shows tasks as bars against time, with dependencies between them and milestones as diamonds.
The critical path is the longest chain of dependent tasks; any delay on it delays the whole project.
Tasks off the critical path have slack and can slip without moving the deadline.
A team contract sets roles, communication, decision-making and consequences before problems arise.
Budgets list every item plus a contingency of about 10%.

Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound

Shot size is measured by how much of a person fills the frame, from EWS to ECU.
MCU (chest up) is the standard interview size; CU carries emotion.
Eye level is neutral; high angle diminishes a subject and low angle empowers them — angle is never neutral.
Rule of thirds: place key elements on the lines of a 3 × 3 grid, with eyes on the upper third.
Lead room is space in front of where a subject looks or moves.
A dolly changes perspective and creates depth; a zoom only magnifies a flat image.
Three-point lighting is key (main, 45° and above), fill (softens shadows) and back (separates from the background).
Daylight is about 5600 K and tungsten about 3200 K — do not mix them without gels.
Aim for audio peaks around −12 dB. Anything reaching 0 dB is clipped and permanently destroyed.
Microphone distance matters more than microphone price.

Camera Settings: Exposure, Focus and Depth of Field

One stop is a doubling or halving of light; aperture, shutter and ISO can be traded against each other in stops.
Full f-stops run f/1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16; each step halves the light because $light \propto \frac{1}{N ^{2}}$ .
180° shutter rule: shutter $\approx \frac{1}{2 \times frame rate}$ , so 1/50 at 24 fps and 1/60 at 30 fps.
Doubling ISO adds one stop of brightness and amplifies noise; stay at native ISO where possible.
Each 0.3 of ND density cuts one stop: ND 0.9 is three stops, ND 1.8 is six.
Depth of field gets shallower with a wider aperture, a longer lens, a closer subject and a larger sensor.

Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export

A non-linear editor references source files rather than containing them, so moving or renaming footage breaks the link.
Trimming is non-destructive — the source file is never altered.
Straight cuts should be the overwhelming majority of any edit.
A J-cut brings the next shot's audio in early; an L-cut carries the current audio over the next picture.
Cutting on action hides the join, because the eye is following the movement.
The 180-degree rule keeps the camera on one side of the line so screen direction stays consistent.
Colour correction fixes and matches; colour grading applies a creative look. Correct first.
Codec is the compression (H.264); container is the wrapper (MP4). They are not the same thing.
$file size (MB) \approx \frac{bitrate \times duration}{8} .$
Export each delivery version from the master, never from another export.

Sound Design: Foley, Music and the Mix

A soundtrack is built in layers: dialogue, room tone, ambience, Foley, hard effects and music.
Mix the dialogue first; duck music beds about 10–20 dB under speech.
Video audio is 48 kHz; the highest frequency captured is half the sample rate.
Each bit of depth adds about 6 dB of dynamic range: 16-bit ≈ 96 dB, 24-bit ≈ 144 dB.
Uncompressed bit rate = sample rate × bit depth × channels; divide by 8 for bytes.
Delivery loudness is measured in LUFS: about −24 for Canadian TV, −23 for EBU, roughly −14 for streaming, with true peaks at or below −1 dBTP.

Live and Multi-Camera Production

Program is what is live; preview is the next shot, checked before it is taken.
Tally lights: red means the camera is on program (live); green means it is on preview (next).
The director calls the shots; the technical director operates the switcher; the floor director cues talent on the floor.
Shot calls come in pairs — 'ready' then 'take' — so the cut can happen on the exact word.
Upload needed ≥ 1.5 × (video + audio bitrate) × number of destinations.
Redundancy means wired networking, a local recording, backup power, a holding slate and a test stream before the event.

Where marks get lost

Shooting in story order, which forces the crew to move and re-light far more often than necessary. (Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning)
Skipping the storyboard because 'we know what we want'. It is the only shared picture the crew has. (Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning)
Gathering too little B-roll, so every edit in an interview shows as a jump cut. (Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning)
Cutting the camera the instant the action ends, leaving the editor no handles to work with. (Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning)
Scouting a location at a different time of day from the shoot, so the light is nothing like what was planned. (Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning)
Forgetting release forms, which can stop a finished video from being published at all. (Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning)
Planning no buffer, so the last shots of the day are rushed or abandoned. (Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning)
Treating the shot list as optional and then discovering on the edit that a needed angle was never filmed. (Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning)
Planning forwards from today instead of backwards from the deadline, so the edit gets whatever time is left over. (Crew Roles and Team Project Management)
Leaving production sound with no owner, then discovering in the edit that every interview is unusable. (Crew Roles and Team Project Management)
Putting the schedule buffer on a task with slack instead of on the critical path, where delays actually move the deadline. (Crew Roles and Team Project Management)
Writing the team contract after the first conflict, when nobody can agree on anything anymore. (Crew Roles and Team Project Management)
Building a budget with no contingency, so the first lost cable or extra prop leaves the project short. (Crew Roles and Team Project Management)
Centring every subject instead of using the rule of thirds. (Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound)
Leaving too much headroom, so the subject appears to sink out of the bottom of the frame. (Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound)
Framing a subject looking straight at the edge of frame with no lead room. (Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound)
Zooming when a dolly move was wanted. Zoom magnifies; only moving the camera creates depth. (Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound)
Omitting the back light, so the subject merges into the background. (Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound)
Mixing daylight and tungsten in one shot, which no grade fully repairs. (Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound)
Recording audio with levels touching 0 dB, which clips permanently. (Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound)
Relying on the camera's built-in microphone from across a room. (Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound)
Not wearing headphones, so the hum and traffic noise are only discovered in the edit. (Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound)
Shooting an interview from a low angle by accident, which makes an editorial claim nobody intended. (Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound)
Confusing the 180° shutter rule with the 180° axis rule used for camera placement and editing. (Camera Settings: Exposure, Focus and Depth of Field)
Assuming a bigger f-number means more light. f/16 is a small opening; f/1.4 is a large one. (Camera Settings: Exposure, Focus and Depth of Field)
Speeding up the shutter to fix bright daylight in video, which makes motion look choppy. Use an ND filter instead. (Camera Settings: Exposure, Focus and Depth of Field)
Pushing ISO to fix a dark scene before adding light or opening the aperture, and ending up with grainy footage. (Camera Settings: Exposure, Focus and Depth of Field)
Shooting a close-up wide open at f/1.4 and losing the eyes to soft focus every time the subject moves slightly. (Camera Settings: Exposure, Focus and Depth of Field)
Moving or renaming source files after importing them, which breaks every link in the project. (Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export)
Using decorative transitions instead of straight cuts, which draws attention to the software rather than the story. (Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export)
Cutting between two near-identical angles of the same subject, producing jump cuts. (Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export)
Crossing the 180-degree line, so two people in conversation appear to face the same direction. (Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export)
Grading before correcting, which bakes exposure and white-balance errors into the look. (Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export)
Changing the frame rate at export, which causes frames to be duplicated or dropped. (Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export)
Exporting a delivery file from another delivery file instead of from the master. (Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export)
Confusing codec with container, and assuming every .mp4 behaves the same way. (Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export)
Dividing by 1000 instead of 8 when converting megabits to megabytes. (Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export)
Keeping a shot because it was hard to get, rather than because the edit needs it. (Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export)
Starting the mix with the music, then discovering the dialogue cannot be heard over it. (Sound Design: Foley, Music and the Mix)
Cutting to digital silence between lines instead of laying room tone, so every edit sounds like a dropout. (Sound Design: Foley, Music and the Mix)
Mixing 44.1 kHz music into a 48 kHz project without noticing, causing a sample-rate conversion or a pitch and timing error. (Sound Design: Foley, Music and the Mix)
Limiting a mix to be as loud as possible for streaming, when the platform will simply turn it down to its loudness target. (Sound Design: Foley, Music and the Mix)
Believing a purchased or streamed song can be used in a published video because 'I bought it' or 'I gave credit'. (Sound Design: Foley, Music and the Mix)
Reframing or refocusing a camera while its tally light is red, putting the adjustment on air. (Live and Multi-Camera Production)
Planning a stream bitrate that uses almost all of the measured upload, with no headroom for normal fluctuations. (Live and Multi-Camera Production)
Forgetting that streaming to two platforms from one encoder doubles the upload needed. (Live and Multi-Camera Production)
Streaming over Wi-Fi in a crowded venue instead of wired Ethernet. (Live and Multi-Camera Production)
Showing the stream key on a projected screen or sharing it in a group chat. (Live and Multi-Camera Production)

Practice test

21 questions from across the unit. Each one shows the lesson it comes from.

Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning
1
At which stage is a problem cheapest to fix?
Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning
2
Which of these belongs on a storyboard panel?
Pre-Production: Story, Storyboards and Planning
3
Why should you hold each shot several seconds longer than the action needs?
Crew Roles and Team Project Management
4
Who is responsible for the schedule, budget and location permissions?
Crew Roles and Team Project Management
5
What does a diamond usually represent on a Gantt chart?
Crew Roles and Team Project Management
6
When should a team contract be written?
Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound
7
Which shot size is standard for an interview?
Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound
8
What is the single biggest factor in getting good audio?
Production: Shots, Composition, Lighting and Sound
9
Why is room tone recorded?
Camera Settings: Exposure, Focus and Depth of Field
10
Which setting lets the most light through the lens?
Camera Settings: Exposure, Focus and Depth of Field
11
What do you call the coloured outline a camera draws on the sharpest edges to show what is in focus?
Camera Settings: Exposure, Focus and Depth of Field
12
An ND filter has an optical density of 0.9. How many stops of light does it cut? (Whole number.)
stops
Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export
13
What is the approximate file size, in megabytes, of a $4 minute$ video at $12 Mb/s$ ?
MB
Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export
14
Why should the overwhelming majority of edits be straight cuts?
Post-Production: Editing, Colour and Export
15
Match each export setting to what it controls.
Resolution
Codec
Container
Bitrate
Sound Design: Foley, Music and the Mix
16
What is the highest frequency, in kHz, that a 48 kHz recording can capture? (Exact value.)
kHz
Sound Design: Foley, Music and the Mix
17
What is the term for automatically lowering background music while someone is speaking?
Sound Design: Foley, Music and the Mix
18
Roughly what dynamic range does 24-bit audio provide?
Live and Multi-Camera Production
19
A camera's tally light is red. What does that mean?
Live and Multi-Camera Production
20
What does the abbreviation PVW stand for on a switcher?
Live and Multi-Camera Production
21
Why should a stream also be recorded locally?

Endless drill

Fresh numbers every time, for the calculation questions in this unit.

Endless drillnew numbers every time

Generating a problem…