Music Concert filmed in HD
 

Hi everyone,

I need some advice/pointers on this one. In spring of 2006 (April or May--date not concrete yet), I will be hosting a southern gospel music concert before a estimated crowd of 1500 people. The facility my firm is using is a new, state of the art performance hall, with all the lighting/audio applications installed for our use. Lighting and audio feed will be no problem.

However, I am hiring (possibly) a video production group to film/edit our event will ultimately be distributed and sold as merchandise after post-production. I decided that HD would be our best bet, as the higher image quality would be preferable to SD viewing, even through downconversion. And the cost of the filming is significant ($9K for our 2 hour event).

My question is: What do I appropriate to the editor in post about how I want to tailor the footage to a more "manipulated look"? I dont want the footage to look "live" but more of a high resolution, film with color warming effects...(lighting will help with this). Do I tell them to shoot in 24fps with warming lenses or what?

The event will be filmed by Eyecon Video Productions of Dallas, TX (http://www.eyeconvideo.com/default.asp)

Please give me any advise on how to achieve a compltely "unraw" look.

Thanks guys...Yall are the best!

DVD Capture
 

By the way, here are some still froma Sade Lover's Live concert filmed by the Polish Brothers that I pulled...this is the "look" I want.

http://geocities.com/millennial_tech/sade/

You want them to shoot in 24P with a warm white balance. If you have good lighting that will take care of 90% of things. DO NOT shoot it in HDV... I just dont like HDV for this kind of thing. I would shoot it with a 3/4 Panny Varicams in 720P 24P. If you are planning on making a 4:3 version make sure to let them know to frame it for that.

How many cams for the $9k? Are they doing a live switch with a truck or just handing you tapes?



ash =o)

^Thanks for the reply.

We will be using 4 cams..one main for center stage, one on a jib crane, and two rovers for audience shots/stage shots.

Are you sure that this shouldn't be shot in HD? If not, I can tell the producer to stay with the SD cams and our cost will go down significantly, like only $4000.

I am really excited about this mainly because the lighting is so state of the art, and we can do alot of lighting effects with the live audience in mind too, but I want to stay with something not too busy..something that is great for the video productions to create great results.

Also, the video production company offers lighting solutions as well...is there anything they can do to help with the lighting? (The equipment is listed on their website per the provided link in my first post.)

Thanks!

4 cams (as mentioned above), no live switching, I will be working with them closely in post production to achieve the look I want.

What type of post production editing can we do to enhance the high quality produced look? Again, I don't want a "live" look from this filming...more like a movie..not film though.

Thanks!!!!

Ash said he wouldn't want it shot in HDV which is different than HD. HDV is a comsummer format that is much more compressed than HD. The prices of the cameras for HD are $60K and up while the prices for HDV cameras are $2600 and up to $9k.

You tell them you want 24p, and ask if the editor they propose can do color-correction work, and if so, can he provide a reel of stuff he's done color work on.

Otherwise, you might suggest that you do a tape-to-tape color correction in a one-light fashion at a facility that has a DaVinci or the like. That will be tough if your whole budget is 9K, tho. Tape-to-tape in a shot-by-shot fashion will be impossible on your budget.

You're looking for a more polished look than just straight uncorrected cameras, but remember that what you see in those Sade grabs are not only the product of a colorist, but alo a product of the lighting design and the specific colors the concert LD chose. If you're unfortunate enough to have YOUR event's LD light everything in an ugly color palette, the best colorist in the world is not going to be able to do much.

(p.s. The lighting gear listed on your prod cos. website is useless for large scale stage shooting. If the lighting is to look good, it will be mostly because the staging company had the right gear and expertise)

I said no HDV... it does not like crazy lighting... In all honesty, I think you could used a SD cam like an SDX900 and it would look great shot in 24P... Make a call and find out what cams they will be using and we will chime in with some better opinions... from the look of their web page it looks like they use Varicams for their HD stuff... that is good. It doesnt look like they have any great SD options...



ash =o)

HDV is an HD recording format which is more heavily compressed than other HD acquisition options, but still offers some of the same benefits at a fraction of the price. In the situation described by the original poster, the company hired appears to be offering either high-end HD or regular SD video, so HDV isn't one of the options under consideration.

Note that HD video is typically downsampled back to SD for distribution, but still yields a very nice image this way which is potentially better that that from most SD cameras. But be advised that this statement on the Eyecon web site is incorrect: "Even when viewed in standard definition, the resulting video has almost six times the resolution..." That's nonsense: the final resolution you receive on an SD DVD will be the same as that from any SD camera, but HD source will generally look a little better -- especially for widescreen output. So if you can afford the extra money for HD recording then go for it, but understand what you're getting for your finished product.

Lighting: Theatre lighting is usually lit for the eye, which has an incredible dynamic range- much greater than video. If the lighting is done for the audience, then the video is going to look very high contrast and the shadows will be pretty dark/black. Video is going to appear much higher contrast than what the audience sees. Shadows that look ok to the eye, but they may look nasty on video. If you walk around in real life, the existing light usually looks good for your eye. But if you walk around with a video camera, the existing lighting doesn't look so great on video.

You might be able to get slightly better quality if you light for video. The sade shots look like the lighting was done for the eye (no detail in the shadows, strong shadow cast underneath the talent's chin), so if you want that look then it might make sense to light for the eye.

2- In my opinion, HD (the format itself) is overrated. The things that really make a difference are:

Art direction
Lighting
Talent and experience of the production crew. The crew may have more experience with one camera over another.
Color correction/enhancement in post. An example of what can be done: http://www.glennchan.info/Proofs/dvi...comparison.mov The right side is after color correction. That's not necessarily the best results you could get with color correction, although it may not be what you get either. It was corrected in Sony Vegas (stronger CC tools; could not have easily been done in FCP) and each shot has a lot of CC going on (very time-consuming).

Things that are less important:
How good the camera is. $60k cameras are typically a little better than $4k cameras.
However, a Sony Z1 will look very comparable to a Varicam after color correction. About 90% of the time you won't be able to tell which shot what. This is from seeing footage from an ESPN show "Full Ride", which did exactly that. The Z1 b-roll cameras had 35mm adapters and were color corrected tape-to-tape style on a Discreet Smoke. The workflow however was not so great, so try to avoid mixing 60i 1080i HDV and 24p DVCPRO HD especially with Final Cut Pro. The HDV footage was converted from 60i to 24p.
*If you read carefully above, the Z1s were effectively not that much cheaper than a Varicam. The 35mm adapter and time spent in post production reduce the cost savings.

I dont think it is fair to say that a Z1 looks comparable to a Varicam. The glass alone sets it apart... add the 2/3" CCD factor and the Z1 is left in the dust. If you are using a Varicam up to the level of its abilities, it creates an image, colors, DOF, etc. that a Z1 cannot come close to. If you are talking a static interview you may have a point but I can promise that I could shoot a concert with a Varicam and you would not be able to replicate hardly any of the shots with a Z1



ash =o)

Thanks guys for all the help for this!! Sorry I haven't posted in the last two days, but I left my laptop power cord at my Dad's house, so now my laptop is out of commission until then..using my mom's computer at work now.

So far, yes, lighting will be a big factor in the overall production here, so I will be making special consultation with the theatre lighting tech or just go ahead and hire a lighting designer to work with the video production guys on this..like I said, the lighting is state of the art..this is a one year old $13 million dollar facility that was designed for plays and other production.

So far the plans (with you alls advice):

HD format record to be downsampled to SD DVD
24fps
Hire lighting designer to work in conjunction with Video crew
White warm balance
Post: Color Correction

Thanks again for the assistance...As we draw nearer to April or May, I will ask more questions and such.

The glass and DOF weren't an issue for that production, since they used 35mm adapters. The only time any of the cameras didn't use a 35mm adapter was when the Varicam was used on the Steadicam. The one thing the Z1 can't do is the slow motion/variable frame rate.

But otherwise, to my eyes, I didn't notice that two different cameras were used until the editor who worked on it told me. In the end the show was finished in SD, so there aren't really any noticeable resolution differences between the cameras.