I was hired (payment terms still to be confirmed) to shoot a band interview and some live performances at the Vanguard that would go up on their website. It was something different and I was very interested to see how the camera (and I) would go in a live situation like that.
Interview Planning
I didn’t know too much about the shoot before-hand. It wouldn’t have made a huge difference to how I would have gone about things in this case. I had the equipment that I had. I did ask whether there were some lights available and I should have known that even when the answer is yes, the answer really is no. It is never the right kind, or enough. Wesley lent me a key light but it was missing a diffuser. He also gave me some good tips in terms of really concentrating on the sound as the key to interviews. Although I had the sense to bring a pair of headphones with me, I didn’t have enough sense to make those closed, sound-cancelling cans, which is what you actually need.
Interview Setup
I arrived an hour and a half early, and that was a good thing because it took that long to get things looking right. The band room was a bit of a mess of stuff but there was a very interesting gold plated wall and a nice deep red on the other wall in that corner.
I tested the light that I had bought and it was nice and bright (too bright without the diffusor) and a nice tungsten colour. Good, at least everything could be seen. I set up the camera to point at the corner and set up the audio recorder.
Then we got down to moving a big piano out of the corner and thinking about what could be used as seats. Originally I was thinking about the couch but it was way too large and a hideous green. There was a shabby looking bench covered in a zebra print and a straight wood back which would work well with two people on it and then we needed something for the interview. In another room I found another of the same bench but also an inflatable yellow horse. Yup, we went with that.
The floor was vacuumed and things positioned and it was looking good. There was another light there that I tried to use as a hair light but it was too strong and it looked daylight balanced and made things look very funny. Decided to go with one light.
Next I tried out focusing, positioning a model in all the positions and the DOF covered everyone well. The zoom function at 10x magnification worked very well for getting focus
The problem was composition. There wasn’t much room to move back and still have a clean frame (doorways and other junk gatecrashed) so I was fairly close, the problem was that I had to cut off the legs to get the headroom in. In the end I lowered the sticks and managed to get everything in. The performers bought in their own guiters and really filled out the frame which I wasn’t even thinking about. It looked good.
I recorded some test video and transferred it to the notebook to have a look. It looked good. Especially the colours.
Next I tested the sound and very quickly realised the hopelessness of trying to monitor with open cans. Really need closed, even sound-cancelling headphones with the volume turned up higher to monitor independent of the real sound in the room compared to the monitor output. This is a crucial purchase.
Ok, everything was now ready and we were short of time as the performers had to do sound checks and the interviewer had to leave at a certain time.
We got going.
Interview Recording
Everything functioned pretty well at the beginning except sound monitoring and consequently the sound was a little low especially for one of the artists who was a little quieter than the others.
The light really did look harsh I thought. But that’s better than too little light.
The big problem occurred because of the heat in the room created by the big light and lack of ventilation etc. etc. The camera started overheating at around 7 minutes but kept on working. At around 10 minutes I asked the interviewer and performers to stop and that we’d need a minute. The moment passed pretty quickly but it wasn’t the most professional bit. One of the performers mentioned the continuity issues that would result from him drinking the wine. I realised this was actually a problem and how I was going to edit things together now with the break and not make it look cheesy and amateur.
The interview lasted just over 20 minutes and I didn’t have to shut things down. It visuals took up about 7 gigs. My battery was down to two bars (I didn’t start from full) I really need two batteries to do this kind of work.
Doing visuals and separate sound is a hard task for one person.
Concert Footage
An hour later I moved downstairs to film from the mezzanine levels the actual performances. I started late because I was talking to an old friend I hand’t seen for awhile.
The light levels were very low and I had to push up to 3200 ISO. which wasn’t actually that much of a problem. The other thing I unfortunately had to do was go down to a shutter speed of 60 when I was shooting 1280x720 50p. I should have been at 100. It resulted in some seriously unnatural movement. I’m not sure why the camera let me go down only to that. I also had to shoot at 2.8 and it resulted a pretty narrow DOF even at the 20m distance I was from the stage. Focus wasn’t a big problem though.
The big problem was the battery running out over such a long period. Deciding what songs I actually wanted to shoot and running out of space on the two 16GB cards for the 3 hour set from three performers. Sound monitoring was also an issue.
Can’t use exposure compensation when on M and shooting video.
I was able to get a CD from the sound guy which should be far better quality that then the very hollow stuff that the recorder got.
Matching up all the disparate video and audio (sometimes I’d shut down video and leave audio on) is going to be a pain but not impossible. Better synchronicity between the two would be better for next time.
Pack up was efficient and I didn’t leave anything behind.
All in all, the work is pretty boring and doesn’t need much creativity at all. Will see if there is any payment involved. It was of course, excellent to try it. Not really the direction I want to go in. Main limitations were overheating, sound monitoring, battery, and card space.
I will be editing over the next couple of days and will write up that experience separately.
Posted 2 years ago
