Godsmack & a 3 camera setup
 

My oldest son and I went to the Godsmack concert here in Anchorage last night.......
They had 3 beta cam's (2 on stage and one dead center on the floor), and 3 jumbo-tron type screens.
There was one person mixing the live feed to the screens MTV style. All of the band members made the camera jockeys job easy by getting right in their face and showing off quite often.

Even though the concert wasn't all that great IMO, and was not even in my top 20, the video really helped the show immensely.

Since they use Godsmack music for an US Army or Airforce TV commercials, they had some opening footage of our troops in Iraq and showed their patriotic side. At the end of the concert, they had 4 F-16's fly over in formation at full afterburner to make it even more intense from a patriotic standpoint.

Just wanted to pass on some fun we had last night.........

Had a similar experience with video usage in a ColdPlay concert. I think they just used some large lipstick black & white cams, but they were all feeding into some sort of processor with real time effects happening on a couple of large screens behind the band. Really cool effects - the footage had the same kind of look and feel as that b&w movie Pi that came out on the indie scene a few years back. High contrast and grain, but a great texture.

i helped out on a shoot for Cold when they came thru here with Manson. was supposed to be for MTV2 but i dont get MTV2 so i dont know if anything i shot ever made it into the video.
highlight?
I tripped into Twiggy backstage, in the dark, as he was going on stage.

This company in West Palm Beach, Florida I occasionally work for does the live video jumbotron for Coral Sky Ampitheatre, where many a major concert seems to start. Now, we don't always go out there, just for bands that don't cough up the dough to do it.

Anyway, we'll go out there, two on stage to the left and right (or down in front of the stage and first row) and one in the center, on a riser where the audio (I think) and lighting guys are. It's pretty cool, with BetaCams, but can be tough when you're zoomed in, on preset (with the lighting changing colors) and the bass/drums causing the camera to shake (it looks bad when you're on macro zoom).

During fests, they'll hire me to shoot "second stage" for security and insurance reasons. Signs clearly posted say no crowd surfing, etc., so when the kids get hurt and try to sue, they have the video record. I used my XL-1 for that, then at night, I'd run down with all my gear and shoot the jumbotron, then back over for the security camera. Got to be rough with 50 pounds of bricks! (I complain too much :-)

heath