6 Camera Concert Shoot

[Chad Stockfleth]

Hey all,

 

I am shooting a concert video for the Apples in Stereo in a couple of weeks, the first show of their three month U.S. tour, and am looking for any general advice people might have.

 

The setup is going to be like this: (4) HVX200's shooting 720/24pn and (2) DVX100's shooting dv/24pa.

 

P2 media downloading is going to be tricky. I'm hoping to have at least 3, hopefully 4 - 4gig cards per camera and a person running two laptops to offload the footage for the 1hr long show.

 

Now, I've shot concerts before, but never with so many cameras. Obviously time-code sync is important, but does anyone know of any little tricks or things to avoid when putting together a shoot like this?

 

I am probably going to be acting more like director and won't operate.

 

Thanks!

[Anna Baltl]

hi chad

 

im doing camera and editing for a japanese music tv show, we produce weekly features on artists showing their live performances shot with usually three cameras. www.musictide.com if you find the "click" arrow you can watch a short preview.

 

just some general blurbs from the last 4 months doing this:

 

good sound is really important, make sure that youve got the best quality possible, that will change the overall result a lot.

if you can, get familiar with the location. find out as much about it and if you get the chance to find the guy doing the stage light, talk to him what he has going on because sometimes these stagelights are just unpredictable and make it really hard to produce usefull images. and you dont want it all screwed up just because of a stupid strobo effect going on half the night.

we usually bing some very basic lights to the shoots and use it most of the time for effects but sometimes they become lifesavers.

 

make sure that the cameras are operating with the exact same settings, especially the gain can screw up a lot it just does not look right to combine snowfall with sunshine. wb of course too.

an "idiot check" with everyone there right before the show is highly recommended.

 

with that many cameras you could think of assingning one to a particular style e.g. shilouettes, it is useful to a certain extent to devide the fields, meaning that you give some people a certain area to move in but because of the solos and different things going on on stage (from my experience) it is better not to assign people to particular point of views or framing. however what i notice with our show is that our camera people often try to catch too much because there is a lot going on on stage and so they keep their angle too wide and editing it becomes pure pain.

the solos are definetly the most difficult part. im sure you know this having shot concerts yourself. it seems mearly impossible to catch a solo right from the start, and if so you usually have "all eyes" on the one playing.

 

as for the editing it is visually very difficult to combine tripod shots with handheld ... for myself i prefer handheld only.

 

generally think as much about the editing before even planing the shoot. you want to show people something and not just have radio on tv ... that i think is the hardest part. an hour can be so long.

 

hope that is of any use

anna

[Anna Baltl]

unfortunately what you can see online is not the final edit its just pieces but in the download section there are quite a few samples if youre wanna see how other people deal with the subject. (all of them produced before i joined the company)

for example "the salinger" clip and the "black light orchestra" one show completely different styles

Edited January 30, 2007 by Anna Baltl

[Nick Mulder]

I've done lots of gigs operating image-mag cameras and a few tape only concerts in addition.

 

Have you thought about how you are going to communicate ?

 

In all live circumstances we had either tethered comms or radio comm sets to receive instructions from the live mixer, this helps immensely in that we all understand where each other is at and its human nature to all pick up 'the most interesting' thing on stage, so you get 6 angle variations of the lead singer picking his nose which is not necessarily what the mixer (or anybody) wants. When we did tape only situations the mixer effectively became the editor and we have on occasion had no direction and therefore had to think about this stuff for ourselves - by using the same radio-comms set up to communicate about who has getting what and who needed to go do, it was very helpful. Imagine if everyone switched off at the same moment etc...

 

I also recommend what Anna has in that you assign each camera a certain POV/look, but obviously let them go a little loose every now and again to keep interest and arm strength up..