Concert shot with HD100

[Steve Oakley]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

@ S. Oakley, Please don't take the criticism so hard. Stephan Ahonen pointed out some good criticism that can help focus with future projects. I am not a fan of the shaky camera work. Have you considered a steadycam or some way to deshake the results in post? That would polish the video as well.

comments are fine if they are objective, but do you know what pushed my button ? the very bad assumption that I :

1. had the resources availbable to do something better and didn't because of lack of knowledge and experiance. this in particular really got me,

2. that I didn't know better, and never had done better

3. that all the bands would provide co-operation to do something, one didn't, they killed the board feed. the camera mic sound is not great because when the camera moves, the sound changes dramtically. the GTR player had his amp on stage in front of him, so when I shot him, them the gtr came up significantly. weird setup, but thats how it happened. so much for the great sound of a camera mic.

4. that something can't be different and it has to meet some standard of taste that may not be everyone's regardless of the peice itself being good bad or indifferent. the attitude was that if you don't do something according to some standard, its not really very good. if all the world throught this way nothing innovative would happen because if you didn't do something "standard" it was not really good. unfortunatley, its also this same standards attitude that permiates LA, and look at the assembly line of flops they have been turning out because of it. Time to do something different.This isn't about the audio being bad ( noisey, low, clipped, ect. ) but being *different* than some folks are used to.


you know it would of been perfectly fine to say you like a more live mix. no problem, but BY INTENT I was not going that way. This was intended to be much more like a music video than a concert per se... mixing genre's, sure, why not. experiment and see what works, what doesn't. who says a concert has to be a concert - I put in a few shots that had nothing to do with the actual performance but worked anyway, like a music video. so maybe I am defining a new format.

as for the "shaky" camera and why not use a steadicam, please go read #1 again, I INTENTIONALLY went for a shaky look, by design. I knew I could not have these smooth steady shots because of what I had to work with, not much. I wanted a woodstock rough moving camera look *by design*. I could of dropped a tripod down in front, nice and steady and boring. much more limited in shots I could get than by doing it HH and keeping it moving. if I had sat the camera down on a tripod, the comments would of been that it should of been more moving and dynamic.


and since I've posted a few clips other clips, I haven't seen anyone else post clips of any video they've shot under the same circumstances and done better, the same, or worse, so hey fair is fair, I showed you mine, now you can show me yours :)

Steve Oakley

[Steve Oakley]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

@ S. Oakley, Please don't take the criticism so hard. Stephan Ahonen pointed out some good criticism that can help focus with future projects. I am not a fan of the shaky camera work. Have you considered a steadycam or some way to deshake the results in post? That would polish the video as well.

comments are fine if they are objective, but do you know what pushed my button ? the very bad assumption that I :

1. had the resources availbable to do something better and didn't because of lack of knowledge and experiance. this in particular really got me,

2. that I didn't know better, and never had done better

3. that all the bands would provide co-operation to do something, one didn't, they killed the board feed. the camera mic sound is not great because when the camera moves, the sound changes dramtically. the GTR player had his amp on stage in front of him, so when I shot him, them the gtr came up significantly. weird setup, but thats how it happened. so much for the great sound of a camera mic.

4. that something can't be different and it has to meet some standard of taste that may not be everyone's regardless of the peice itself being good bad or indifferent. the attitude was that if you don't do something according to some standard, its not really very good. if all the world throught this way nothing innovative would happen because if you didn't do something "standard" it was not really good. unfortunatley, its also this same standards attitude that permiates LA, and look at the assembly line of flops they have been turning out because of it. Time to do something different.This isn't about the audio being bad ( noisey, low, clipped, ect. ) but being *different* than some folks are used to.


you know it would of been perfectly fine to say you like a more live mix. no problem, but BY INTENT I was not going that way. This was intended to be much more like a music video than a concert per se... mixing genre's, sure, why not. experiment and see what works, what doesn't. who says a concert has to be a concert - I put in a few shots that had nothing to do with the actual performance but worked anyway, like a music video. so maybe I am defining a new format.

as for the "shaky" camera and why not use a steadicam, please go read #1 again, I INTENTIONALLY went for a shaky look, by design. I knew I could not have these smooth steady shots because of what I had to work with, not much. I wanted a woodstock rough moving camera look *by design*. I could of dropped a tripod down in front, nice and steady and boring. much more limited in shots I could get than by doing it HH and keeping it moving. if I had sat the camera down on a tripod, the comments would of been that it should of been more moving and dynamic.


and since I've posted a few clips other clips, I haven't seen anyone else post clips of any video they've shot under the same circumstances and done better, the same, or worse, so hey fair is fair, I showed you mine, now you can show me yours :)

Steve Oakley

[Stephen L. Noe]

Maybe critiques were stated in a way that seemed offensive, but I don't think anyone meant anything personal. Rather I think the comments are to make the production more polished.

Anyway, it's hard to believe the Femmes are still drawing a crowd. What was the gate at that show?

[Stephan Ahonen]

I really didn't mean to offend. Unfortunately, the internet is such that you can read things in that were never really there in the first place. Boo for the internet.

I think the "shaky" camera looked fine. Footage can't be super-stable all the time, especially under live event constraints, a tripod limits your mobility far too much. Plus, the handheld feel really gives a nice "live" dynamic to the image. I know a guy who worked with a producer who had him shoot a ton of interviews handheld because he wanted that feel to it. Absolutely wrecked the cameraman's shoulder.

intercoms are totally useless at any rock/hiphop/reggea event, if you 've ever really done a major concert event, you'd know that

http://www.davidclark.com/ProAudio/

I first heard about these from a guy who shoots NASCAR, they're the same headsets that pilots in small planes use to hear ATC, only with plugs for intercom systems. Very nice at cutting out noise, you can hear the director anywhere.

[Jack Walker]

A TV show that really could have used some professional camera people was NYPD Blue. No wonder it got cancelled. Apparently it was pretty low budget, though, since they had to use just one camera panning back and forth to cut down on editing time of making cuts to different shots.

There are a lot of shows on air now that have a lot of footage that is blown out and with a video-color smeary look. I think one of them is something called CSI. But then, since they didn't have enough money to pay for big-name actors, they probably didn't have the budget for good cameras and crew, either.

I personally think the only problem with the concert video in this thread is the subject. If it were me, I would have insisted on some hot talent, or I wouldn't have taken a camera out of the bag. Regarding the audio in the video, true professional singers, like Britney and Simpson, don't try to sing live, they lip synch, and then you can use the audio CD for the track and mix it with some totally professional Sit-Com audience track.

[Steve Oakley]

Originally Posted by Jack Walker

Regarding the audio in the video, true professional singers, like Britney and Simpson, don't try to sing live, they lip synch, and then you can use the audio CD for the track and mix it with some totally professional Sit-Com audience track.

I'll assume your being facitous with that comment.... if you ever said that in front of chaka kahn whom I shot a few years ago, she would of knocked you senseless for that one, serious or not. Real proffessional singers can and do really sing every gig. I've worked with a lot of them. I got to work on a Gladys Knight package and she still sings, and she's been at it for a long long time and still does a great fun show. no one would ever accuse britney or simpson as being real singers, just products of a label marketing machine. They have to lip sync because they are not good singers and are more concerned with their stage show & dancing than vocal performance.

Steve Oakley

[Steve Oakley]

Originally Posted by Stephan Ahonen

http://www.davidclark.com/ProAudio/

I first heard about these from a guy who shoots NASCAR, they're the same headsets that pilots in small planes use to hear ATC, only with plugs for intercom systems. Very nice at cutting out noise, you can hear the director anywhere.

thanks for that. every truck or fly pack I've had has always had the usual clearcoms & headsets. so I'll spec in on my next concert package


Steve Oakley

[Jack Walker]

Originally Posted by Steve Oakley

I'll assume your being facitous with that comment....
Steve Oakley

Yes... I thought the "sit-com audience track" would have given it away, if Britney and Simpson didn't.

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Stephan Ahonen

Did the musicians perform to a click in their live performance? Otherwise it must've been killer to try to sync up.

Oh, and a group of musicians will never all simultaneously "forget" an arrangement on stage. They probably consciously changed the arrangement some time between when they originally recorded it and when they performed it.

The back-up musicians were all hired for the event and were expected to sing the choruses. The lead singer doesn't travel with a regular band, he's a famous musician from the sixties who shall remain nameless in this discussion. Apparently the sheet music wasn't clear or it was a case of someone forgot to sing and the other musicians cut themselves off since no-one was really familiar with the arrangement. Who knows, but there it was, shots of silent musicians and the lead looking around with a smile at everyone. At the concert it just looks like a conscious decision to not sing and have a little music play the chorus. With the corrected track, it's very strange.

Sync isn't very hard, I find a distinctive spot on the audio waveform, a drum hit for example, and line up the tracks. A little frame shift fixes it. The audio tracks were the same length so there was no sync drift as the songs progressed. The audio was recorded in a 24 track audio truck outside the club. My cameras were sync locked.

We would mix into the club sound only when there was a piece of audio that didn't exist on the CD such as during a bit of talk in between songs. It worked very well. The DVD was released by a large distributor.

[Steven Thomas]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

Same here William, We always pull the discrete channel feeds and then do the mix in post production and never worry about the live mix other than ambient from the camera mics. It's a completely separate process (audio) and we have a mobile DAW for concerts/clubs specifically (10 channel).

S.Noe

Yes...
Agreed!

The last concert we shot, we stold direct signals and fed them into a multitrack recorder. From here, "the world is at your finger tips" -
you can fully mix, add all the processing you wish and master it.

If available, you can use a splitter snake to steal the signals direct from the talent to your own mixer / multi-track recorder.
Unfortunately, if the band is already using a splitter snake, it is usually used for the stage foldback mix.

For additional live crowd noise, you can use your camera mic for between songs.

[Stephan Ahonen]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

The back-up musicians were all hired for the event

Ewww, that explains it.

As for sync, you're lucky the band was playing to a metronome in this case. If they weren't, you would have never been able to pull that off because their tempo wouldn't have been exactly the same as the recording.

[Eric Darling]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

@ S. Oakley, Please don't take the criticism so hard. Stephan Ahonen pointed out some good criticism that can help focus with future projects. I am not a fan of the shaky camera work. Have you considered a steadycam or some way to deshake the results in post? That would polish the video as well.

There's a lot of presuppostion of Steve's credentials and experience going on in this thread.

I'm sure if he had a choice in the matter, or a budget to speak of, he would have elected for a more optimum setup, including additional cameras. If you were shooting this with a single camera (whatever the reason), do you think you'd have time to worry about setting sticks down at each spot you've chosen to get cutaway angles? Think of the scrambling that he must have been doing to cover it as well as he did... Was there really room in the budget for a Steadicam?

I don't believe he submitted it as an example of his best work - since I've seen some of his work (which did have a full crew and budget, usually). It holds together pretty well given the circumstances, and I'd doubt that anyone besides a seasoned pro would have gotten this far with it in post or otherwise.

In any case, I can definitely see how Steve interpreted the criticisms shared here as a bit patronizing. In this business, good criticism accounts for elements out of the producer's control. You guys didn't do that.

[William Hohauser]

It's always why didn't this happen or why that didn't happen but that's what most video professions have to deal with. 70% of my career in this business has been working around some sort of problem, either inherent in the project or something that suddenly pops up. The problems could be budgets, personality conflicts, faulty equipment, vanishing money, etc.

I was directing the videotaping of a political roundtable for distribution on PBS a couple of months ago at a prestigious university auditorium. Five minutes before we were scheduled to start water stars pouring down from the ceiling, dead center of the stage, in front of the moderator. The air conditioning system was full of condensation and this was apparently where it leaks out regularly! We waited until the downpour stopped but it kept dripping and time was running out, the discussion had to start. There was a very restless live audience. I determined that the drip was invisible on the long shot and the other cameras were repositioned so that the drip didn't interfered with the panel guests. This sort of ruined the background behind the guests but there was no alternative. The last problem was the sound of water dropping thirty feet onto the stage. The university staff found some gym towels which absorbed the sound but unfortunately the towels were pure white and the stage 80% grey. So I couldn't see the drip on the wide shot but there was a pile of towels dead center of the shot. I thought that I would fix it with After Effects during the edit process but right after we finished shooting the program producer tells me that there was a change in the broadcast schedule and I would have to edit the event in a few days instead of the agreed upon two weeks. So I did what I would have done in the old linear edit days, I found wide shots from later in the evening where you absolutely couldn't see the mouths clearly (the towels had been removed at this point) and replaced all the towel shots. I can see the edits but the host and the producer actually forgot that the towels were ever on stage. Was the show a success? It's not going on my reel but people were captivated by the discussion so in that way it was a success.

As a professional I can frequently see fixes and cover ups that the lay viewer couldn't care less about. For me that's the real question, is the finished product effective for the intended audience? Is the documentary informative without putting people to sleep? Is a filmed concert delivering the live experience of the event? Is the comedy actually funny?

The short clips that started this thread gave me a great feel for the event depicted. They are news clips of sorts. Yes, I could see that the edits were from different times but most people would be very happy with those clips and I would have probably edited something very similar given the same footage.

[John Vincent]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

Is the documentary informative without putting people to sleep? Is a filmed concert delivering the live experience of the event? Is the comedy actually funny?

The short clips that started this thread gave me a great feel for the event depicted. They are news clips of sorts. Yes, I could see that the edits were from different times but most people would be very happy with those clips and I would have probably edited something very similar given the same footage.

I think that it depends on whether or not the documentary is acting as an important historical document. Perhaps the greatest documentary ever made was the WORLD AT WAR series from BBC. That show did the painstaking research not only to find war footage, but actual footage from the actual battles (ie- not just footage from a random WWII battle). That sort of work is needed for something as serious as WWII.

But for a concert, or animal documentary, it's not only fine to 'fudge' a few scenes, but also to more or less stage them - just about every animal documentary ever made is guilty of this 'sin' in one way or another, particularly the older ones. Television interviews having been doing this for years of course (ie - taking/editing in reaction shots out of context to deliever a greater impact).

Doing it for political debates (neat story by the way) I think is a bit of a grey area, but then again it depends on exactly who's paying the bills and what they want. Obviously the people in your story didn't come to talk about the (indoor) weather!

But what if you had a chance to go back in time to shoot the Gettysburg Address? Would you want to edit around the gaffes, or show the whole thing? Or perhaps a better analogy, would you shoot all of Lincoln's re-election campaign speeches and edit them together for effect, or shoot one and let it ride?

Interesting thread - thanks for the footage!

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

[Jack Walker]

Originally Posted by John Vincent

Doing it for political debates (neat story by the way) I think is a bit of a grey area, but then again it depends on exactly who's paying the bills and what they want....

In the case of a political debate (as opposed to a political ad) I think to distort what the candidates say is just dishonest, and those responsible should pay, possibly with there jobs (as they do in rare cases, such as the car rolling over or the Rather debacle.)

On the other hand, I think Verité can be a most powerful form, and the upcoming mini-series that will be broadcast September 10 and 11 (both in the U.S. and in England) is a case in point. By all accounts, the show is incredible, and by far the best of anything done on 9-11 and/or terrorism to date.