Jon: 00:06
This is FiveMinuteFriday, providing a behind-the-scenes tour of a data science video tutorial.
Jon: 00:19
All right. So we’re here in Union Square in New York at Production Central Studios, and we’ve got a full production shoot here. I just finished a four-day marathon on probability and statistics. I can’t wait to get these videos out to you. I even use a quarter to demonstrate heads versus tails flips quite a bit in the videos.
Jon: 00:44
So Erina here is the producer of the show. What does a producer do on a shoot like this?
Erina: 00:52
Well, I basically run it. I’m also kind of directing and keeping track of everything and calling the shots, helping to tour-
Jon: 01:01
Bossing me around.
Erina: 01:01
Yeah. Making sure you have a great performance and keeping everything consistent and making sure we’re on track and things like that.
Jon: 01:09
Yeah.
Erina: 01:10
Bossing him around.
Jon: 01:12
Yeah. Bossing Guillaume around as well. So Erina makes sure that I’m on track with everything. I’m constantly getting off track. That’s kind of what I do.
Erina: 01:21
Yeah.
Jon: 01:21
But I think we’ve been doing shoots together since like 2017.
Erina: 01:24
A while now.
Jon: 01:25
A long time. So many, many, many, many dozens of hours, maybe more than 100 hours. Actually, probably easily more than 100 hours of time spent in this studio, creating various deep learning videos, math videos, machine learning videos. And yeah, so I don’t know if there’s that many other interesting things about actually where I stand when I’m doing these. But you get this perception from the actual camera that I’m in a really kind of neat and organized space. So when you go look at the camera, everything looks nice and tidy, but all around is complete chaos, making everything look perfect in terms of lighting and sound.
Jon: 02:13
And so, Guillaume, what do you do actually in this room? So Erina’s kind of out in the back, listening on headphones, and she’s got a whole setup back there of monitors, tracking video and audio so that she can tell me when I’ve messed up and need to retake, which happens all the time. And so Guillaume, you’re out here with the camera, with this little computer here and oh, you have a slate. Can you clap the slate for us and give us an authentic situation?
Guillaume: 02:43
Well, it will be like lesson 1.3, take one.
Jon: 02:48
Oh, yeah. Or real life slack. I mean slate. Yeah. So what do you get up to here in the room?
Guillaume: 02:57
Well, I’m mostly an extra set of hands to help set up the studio, the equipment and make sure there’s no problems while the shoot itself happens.
Jon: 03:06
Right.
Guillaume: 03:07
Erina is in the directing station and sometimes also tele prompt for you to read off your script.
Jon: 03:14
Yeah, that’s right. So we’ve got a suite teleprompter here. So you guys probably thought I was great at speaking, but I can’t speak at all. Even everything I’m doing right now is on the teleprompter. No, all this is ad-libs, so it’s probably not that great. But so yeah, the teleprompter, so you can’t see the camera, or maybe you can just barely see the camera through there. But so it appears that I’m looking at the camera when, in fact I’m reading lots of lines.
Jon: 03:38
All right. So that gives you a quick tour of what it’s like to be in a real production studio filming live lessons on probability and statistics. Catch you on another FiveMinuteFriday soon.
