生活在COVID-19影响下的世界：电视主持人在家挣扎

由 Rob EnderleMar 30， 2020 10：31 上午 PT

被困在家里给了我们太多的思考时间，我们中的许多人正在迅速通过在线内容上岗。我刚刚注意到的一件事是，通常有现场观众的电视节目突然变得几乎无法观看。

我的家人喜欢《每日秀》 和《今晚上周》一展，但看了最近的节目后，我不确定我们还会不会再看它们了。我预计这会发生，因为几个月前我看了一集《大爆炸理论The Big Bang Theory》（可以说是当时我最喜欢的情景喜剧），没有笑点，从搞笑到悲伤。

在 COVID-19 病毒的上下文中，我们突然需要远程查看事件，想出办法让受众感到参与度这件事情从未如此重要。

我花了四年时间试图成为一名演员，并和他们一起长大，我亲眼目睹了娱乐业是如何学会处理订婚问题的。像《每日秀》、《上周今晚》这样的节目，以及大多数深夜脱口秀节目需要重新吸取教训，否则收视率下降可能会结束这些节目。

我将分享我的想法，这些节目忘记了什么，以及本周我们需要用我们的虚拟事件做什么。我将结束我的一周产品：新的VR视频游戏半生：Alyx，这是令人难以置信的，恐怖的就像可怕的地狱。

吸引远程受众

原来的一个优点，就是我们这些长期存在的人，已经看到问题又如雨后春雨般地出现。例如，以吸引远程受众的想法为例。当我长大了，使用现场观众是例外，而不是规则。

像戈默·派尔这样的.M.C。， 主演我父亲的老朋友吉姆 · 纳博斯 （我得花一些时间在设置上）， 在声音舞台上拍摄， 没有现场观众。相反，他们用一个时音的配乐的人笑，既指向什么是有趣的，并得到一个团体的反应，喜剧事件。它的工作，但它没有工作，以及让人们生活。因此，随着时间的推移，几乎所有的成功节目都转移到了现场观众。

到目前为止，你在电视上通常听到的——也就是说，直到他们关闭现场观众——是真人笑，然而，你可能没有意识到的是，笑声不是自发的。他们经常跟着一个只有电视观众才能看见的照明标志，这个标志上写着"笑"。

节目的创作者发现，笑，无论是罐装的还是真实的，都趋向于具有感染力（好样的），人们大多会跟着笑。移除观众，不回到笑的轨道 - 可能是因为一些白痴认为这将是不真实的 - 使观众更难确定的东西是否有趣，结果是一个相对沉闷和无趣的节目，即使笑话是几乎相同的质量。

笑轨道的问题

现在笑道的一个明显问题是，艺人没有人可以玩。如果他们停下来笑， 他们听不到， 只是感觉很奇怪。如果他们不暂停，观众可能会错过下一行。

如果您是在线电话会议的演讲者，而在房间里，您可能自己也曾遇到这种情况。你可能还记得这感觉有点奇怪。远程，你不知道是否有人在听你说话。就你所有来说，每个人都决定让你退出。如果他们和你在一起，至少你一般可以判断他们是否在关注或已经漂流到电子邮件。

演讲者或演员通常听不到的笑曲目无法提供必要的反馈水平。即使他们听笑道，也会有一种感觉，他们听到的是人为的，而且可能不会有同样的影响。

那么，为什么他们不能将受众虚拟化呢？

人工智能vs 活人

我可以看到两种方法来做到这一点。其一是，你有一个人工智能系统驱动一个现实的配乐，是更好的定时，听起来更像真正的人。另一种是使用真正的人。

当然，如果你试图为电视节目为整个观众做乐器，就会出现带宽问题，但并不是每个看电视节目的人都在房间里。不管怎样， 电视节目通常提前录制， 所以即使你能缩放它，也不起作用。

那么，为什么不在能够实时响应的实时虚拟观众面前使用磁带呢？当然， 节目可能需要支付他们， 以确保质量。它可以根据观众的声音和行为表现来交换他们。不过，您应该能够以小到中等规模的观众人数来会议，然后将他们的声音混合到节目中。

同样重要的是，演讲者/喜剧演员可以观看来自观众的视频会议源，这样他们就可以获得实时反馈，把控时间并提高他们的表演质量。

这种提要不应该与更广泛的受众分享，因为人们往往会忘记他们在镜头前。例如，我哥哥分享说，在最近的一个视频会议课上，一个参与者开始使用bong，另一个参与者赤裸裸地站起来，忘了他在镜头前。当然，这两者都可能创造了一些额外的兴奋，但事件可能对这些个人的声誉们没有任何的好处。

总结：记住虚拟事件的优点

节目忘记的是，在有现场观众之前，是有笑声音轨的。虽然没有现场观众那么好， 但他们总比什么都没有好。我刚出去吃午饭， 看了最新的《每日秀》节目， 没有任何笑声， 这很痛苦。

仅仅因为人们不会进入工作室， 这并不意味着你不能让相机操作员远程运行相机。您仍然可以在家里做绿屏（提供有趣的背景），并且您可以访问编辑。

借助当今的技术，您还可以创建虚拟受众，如果您正在考虑进行流式活动，请考虑让部分观众预先选择和排练，并声源不断地进入活动的声音流，以便更广泛的观众听到参与。

史蒂夫·乔布斯曾经把任何活动的前面都和那些被排练的人放在一起，知道什么时候加油，这帮助人们为公告而兴奋起来。实际上，这样做是可能的。看来，自从我们走远了，我们已经忘记了所有最初用于电视，甚至电台广播的技巧，以创造现场观众的错觉，并帮助参与。

总的来说，我们很多人似乎跑得太多，思考不够，即使在媒体领域。我们应该使用可用的工具来创建内容，这是惊人的，有趣的，引人入胜的，值得一看，即使在有限的预算下（只针对于YouTube），这可能使一些编程甚至比COVID-19之前更好。如果它不必吸， 为什么不解开它？（这是一个我认为我以前用过的术语， 可能有充分的理由） 。

一段时间，我一直在试图找到一个虚拟现实游戏，让我参与。我有几个VR钻机，但直到最近我没有使用它们太多。这些天，我有一个真正的需要，至少觉得我可以走出家门，我一直在使用我的新VR钻机（三星单位）做的事情，如采取博物馆旅游虚拟。

然而，我刚刚安装了半生不宁：Alyx，突然我有很多吓唬自己的废话的乐趣。这个游戏是典型的半生僵尸冒险，一个女人玩它，这是一个有点不寻常的流派。这似乎并不重要，因为在这个虚拟世界里没有镜子。

半生：阿莱克斯

游戏开始很快只是拼图。然后你从死僵尸变成亡灵僵尸，事情变得有趣起来。亡灵第一次出现时，我冻僵了，当我意识到子弹用完了，那家伙肢解了我时，我冻僵了，死得很丑。谢天谢地， 他们还没有实现疼痛界面。

我预计这个游戏会更好与即将到来的混响G2耳机从惠普。此耳机在发布时有望成为类中最好的耳机，并且可以添加到所有 VR 游戏中。

现在，在玩游戏时，请确保您有足够的空间，并跟踪电缆在哪里。我被包裹在住了几次， 我几乎打破了我的显示器， 以为我是在反击僵尸杀了我。

如果你有足够的计算能力（我使用的是AMD线程处理系统），真实感水平是令人难以置信的。我第一次玩的时候，两个小时过得很像什么。做完后我有点头晕， 但我脸上露出了灿烂的笑容。这是令人惊讶的乐趣拍摄逼真的僵尸。

因为半生不小： Alyx 是第一个 VR 游戏， 让我享受 VR （驾驶模拟器之外）， 这是我本周的产品！

Living in the COVID-19 World: TV Hosts Struggle at Home

By Rob Enderle Mar 30, 2020 10:31 AM PT

https://www.technewsworld.com/story/86592.html

Being stuck at home gives us all way too much time to think, and many of us are burning through online content very rapidly. One of the things I just noticed is that TV shows that typically have live audiences suddenly have become almost unwatchable.

My family likes both The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight, but after watching the most recent shows, I'm not sure we'll be watching them anymore. I expected this would happen, given that a few months ago I watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory (arguably my favorite sitcom at the time) without a laugh track, and it went from funny to sad.

In the context of the COVID-19 virus and our sudden need to view events remotely, coming up with ways to make audiences feel engaged has never been more critical.

I spent four years trying to be an actor and grew up with a number of them, and I saw firsthand how the entertainment industry learned to deal with the engagement problem. Shows like The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, and most late-night talk shows need to relearn those lessons or a ratings fall is likely to end them.

I'll share my thoughts about what these shows are forgetting, and what we need to do with our virtual events this week. I'll close with my product of the week: the new VR video game Half-Life: Alyx, which is incredible and just a tad scary as hell.

Engaging a Remote Audience

One of the advantages of being old, and it is kind of a shortlist, is that those of us that have been around for a long time have seen problems solved that are springing up again. Take, for instance, the idea of engaging a remote audience. When I was growing up, the use of a live audience was the exception and not the rule.

Comedies like Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., which starred my father's old friend Jim Nabors (I got to spend some time on set), were shot on a sound stage and didn't have a live audience. Instead, they used a timed soundtrack of people laughing, both to point to what was funny and to get a group reaction to the comedic event. It worked, but it didn't work as well as having people live. So, over time, almost all of the successful shows moved to a live audience.

What you generally heard on TV shows up to now -- that is, until they shut down live audiences -- was real people laughing, However, what you maybe didn't realize was that the laughs weren't spontaneous. They often followed a lighted sign that only the TV audience could see, which said "laugh."

The show creators found that laughter, whether canned or real, tended to be viral (the good kind) and that people were manipulated into more likely laughing along. Removing the audience and not going back to a laugh track -- likely because some idiot thought that it would be inauthentic -- makes it harder for the audience to determine if something is funny, and the result is a relatively dull and unfunny program even though the jokes are pretty much the same quality.

Problem With a Laugh Track

Now the one glaring problem with a laugh track is that the entertainers have no one to play off. If they pause for laughter they can't hear, it just feels weird. If they don't pause, the audience may miss the next line.

You may have faced this yourself if you've been the speaker while on an online conference call vs. being in the room. You'll likely remember that it kind of feels weird. Remotely, you have no idea whether anyone is listening to you. For all you know, everyone just decided to tune you out. If they are in the room with you, at least you generally can tell if they are paying attention or have drifted off to email.

A laugh track, which speakers or actors generally don't hear, can't provide the necessary level of feedback. Even if they did listen to a laugh track, there would be a sense that what they were hearing was artificial, and it likely wouldn't have the same impact.

So, why can't they virtualize an audience?

AI vs. Live People

I can see two ways to do this. One is that you have an artificial intelligence system drive a realistic soundtrack that is better timed and sounds more like real people. The other is to use actual real people.

Of course, there would be a bandwidth problem if you tried to instrument the entire audience for a TV show -- but not everyone who watches a TV show is in the room. TV shows are generally taped ahead anyway, so that wouldn't work even if you could scale it.

So, why not tape in front of a live virtual audience that can respond in real time? Granted, the show might have to pay them to ensure quality. It could swap out audience members based on how they sounded and how well behaved they were. Still, you should be able to conference in the number of people in a small to a moderately sized audience and then mix their sound into the program.

Just as important, the speakers/comedians could see the video conferencing feed from the audience, so they would get real-time feedback for timing and to improve their performance quality.

This feed should not be shared with the broader audience, as people tend to forget they are on camera. For instance, my brother shared that in a recent video conference class, one participant started using a bong, and another stood up naked, forgetting he was on camera. Granted, both likely created some additional excitement, but the incidents probably didn't do those individuals' reputations any good.

Wrapping Up: Remembering the Advantages of Virtual in Virtual Events

What programs are forgetting is that before where were live audiences, there were laugh tracks. While not as good as live audiences, they were a ton better than nothing. I just broke for lunch and watched the latest Daily Show episode, and it was painful without any laughter.

Just because people aren't going into studios, that doesn't mean you can't have camera operators running the cameras remotely. You can still do green screens at home (providing interesting backgrounds), and you can have access to editing.

With today's technology, you also can create virtual audiences, and if you are thinking of doing a streamed event, consider having some of the audience preselected and rehearsed, and feed their sound into the event's sound stream so that the broader audience hears engagement.

Steve Jobs used to pack the front of any event with people who were rehearsed to know when to cheer, and it helped drive excitement for announcements. It's possible to do that virtually. It just seems that since we've gone remote, we've forgotten all the tricks that initially were used for TV, and even radio broadcasts, to create the illusion of a live audience and help with engagement.

In general, a lot of us seem to be running around too much and not thinking enough, even in the media space. We should use available tools to create content that is amazing, funny, engaging, and worth watching even on a limited budget (just go to YouTube), which potentially could make some of this programming even better than it was before COVID-19. If it doesn't have to suck, why not un-suck it? (That's a term I don't think I've ever used before, likely for a good reason).

For some time, I've been trying to find a virtual reality game that keeps me engaged. I have several VR rigs, but until recently I didn't use them much. These days, I have a real need to at least feel like I can get out of the house, and I have been using my newer VR rig (a Samsung unit) to do things like take museum tours virtually.

However, I just installed Half-Life: Alyx, and suddenly I'm having a ton of fun scaring the crap out of myself virtually. This game is your typical Half-Life zombie adventure, and you play it as a woman, which is a tad unusual for this genre. That doesn't seem to matter, because in this virtual world there are no mirrors.

Half-Life: Alyx

The game starts quickly with just puzzles. Then you go from dead to undead zombies, and things get interesting. The first time the undead showed up, I froze and got an ugly death when I realized I'd run out of bullets, and the guy dismembered me. Thank goodness they haven't implemented a pain interface yet.

I expect this game will be even better with the coming Reverb G2 Headset from HP. This headset is expected to be the best in class when it releases, and it could add to all VR games.

Now, when playing the game, make sure you have plenty of room and keep track of where the cable is. I got wrapped up in mine several times, and I nearly broke my monitor thinking I was fighting back against the zombie killing me.

If you have enough computing power (I'm using an AMD Threadripper system), the level of realism is incredible. The first time I played, two hours went by like nothing. I was a bit dizzy when done, but I had this massive grin on my face. It is surprisingly fun to shoot realistic zombies.

Since Half-Life: Alyx is the first VR game that got me to enjoy VR (outside of driving simulators), it is my product of the week!