Concert Shoot

[Ricpolitics]

I'm going to be shooting my second concert next week, and I was just wondering if anyone had any tips they could give me. I'll be shooting with a DVX and an Azden sgm-1x. I appreciate any help you can provide. Thanks.

[grinner]

stay in preset for those ever-changing lights. You can always treat it in post.
Think of each chorus as your chance for a diffrent angle/cutaway. tr to reposition yourself/your sht for these without bagging yourself on content between them. Always grab some crowdage...these are your cutaways when repositioning yourself.

[Ricpolitics]

Thanks a lot, sounds like good advice. I was also wondering what I should do about the audio. I was thinking of either having my external microphone pick up both channels, or just the left and have the built in mic pick up the rigth channel. What do you think?

[ddp]

What I learned from my first real shoot, which happened to be a concert, is auto-focus will kill you with the ever changing lights.
Also I couldn't use tripods because the house system sub-woofers play havoc on the cameras and handheld long zooms make for very quick cuts at the editing stage.
I also set the iris and shutter speed according to the reading I took from the opening acts, little did I know the lightman thought the headliner should have a much darker look therefore my settings were lacking...... unfortunately the guys I recruited as camera dudes know nothing about cameras so they couldn't make any adjustments on-the-fly. I just tried my best in post to fix.

Here's my first effort:
http://ddpav.com/VIDEO/AP-FALL_BACK_INTO_MY_LIFE.mov

ddp

[Attic6]

I shot one recently. 1 camera at the back on a tripod lock off of the full stage also getting lines in from the mixing desk, one channel set slightly higher than the other, use the loud one for the talking/unplugged songs and the lower one for the higher songs if it starts getting too loud. then i had 2 guys one with .4x wide angle shooting handheld on the satge from one side, and another shooting handheld from the other side of the stage. that way the handheld guys got solo's and cool stuff close up, and plenty of croud stuff both between and during songs. I chopped the stuff really fast together, was mostly punk and metal bands, so i worked out ok. i use each shot evenly. Just tell your camera guys not to try any stupid arty crap like turning the camera up side down during a solo and so on.

this way you got close ups of mouths singing and hands on fret boards and drummers sweating... and you always have the wide which is permanently there to cut to if both handheld huys get too carried away...

Will try get one of my cuts compressed and up to show.

What band/type of music is it? if its kenny g type stuff, maybe put all 3 on tripods...

[Ricpolitics]

Well its going to be a series of hip hop shows. They are at small venues and I'm the only camera man shooting, so the shot has to constantly look good. As far as my audio goes, do you think I should keep the shotgun mic on one channel and the built in dvx mic on another? Or should both channels go through the shotgun?

[Attic6]

I'm not sure about the audio, more a bmx type filmer myself. But, if you can sell your soul to whoever you can even to get your girlfriends brother to come shoot for you with his cell phone, just so that you have another angle to work with later. Try anything to get another angle...

[ddp]

Sound pressure levels (spl) of concerts can be pretty high, does your shotgun mic have a pad just in case? the dvx has a volume control but that doesn't pad the input and that could lead to some distortion issues at high spl- internal mic or external mic.

If you can get your hands on a decent dynamic mic like a Sure SM57 you won't have to worry about the incoming spl level (they're near bullet proof) and they're around a hundred bucks. the band/club probably has one you can borrow- along with a separate mic stand to mount it on since it's a bit camera-mount unfriendly.

I also agree with Attic6 regarding a second camera- you've got to have a least one friend/parent with a $200 sony handi-cam, use it for black-and-white/effects shots and call it "artistic". use it for close ups and mess with it in post, it'll add a little diversity.

DDP

[JSF]

Sound in a concert, if it's really loud (over 110db) will sound poor at best with your cameras built in mic. Best thing I could say is to record seperately and link in post.

A laptop or digital recorder with a pair of mics (one up front, one in back) and a firewire so you can record both channels seperately works really well. If it's rap, I'd say you don't need a third "crowd" mic since people probably won't be singing along. *You MUST check your sound durring soundcheck, believe me, if it's a high spl, you'll need to do some adjusting to keep from cliping the audio...Like ddp said above, use a program or a mic with a db pad that you can trim.

You can run audio from the board, but if you can get each channel individually via a firewire mixer setup, you can mix in post with most audio programs. If you don't, if you just run with a combined main output, your going to get the "live" mixdown, which never sounds good on the video. *and you won't get any of the crowd noise, cause they don't run that through the main outputs.

A great setup would be 1 live mic (which can be run through the board to make things easy, but doesn't need to be run through the house) and a short snake run out of the insert channels on the board to a firewire mixer that runs to your laptop. Use a program like cubase, ableton live, or sonar to record each input seperately, then mix it down and match it to your video in your NLE.

It will sound and look pro...


Sorry for the book, if you have anymore questions just let me know,

JF

[John Kary]

You can run audio from the board, but if you can get each channel individually via a firewire mixer setup, you can mix in post with most audio programs. If you don't, if you just run with a combined main output, your going to get the "live" mixdown, which never sounds good on the video. *and you won't get any of the crowd noise, cause they don't run that through the main outputs. Come on guys, keep this in scope of what 1 person can do like the OP mentioned... the above is overkill for a small venue hip-hop show... Depending on the soundman, the "live" mixdown can sound poor and unbalanced or really good, but remember, the soundguy is mixing for the ROOM, not your recording device.

Each venue comes with its challenges. If it's a small venue, you might not be able to find a place elevated above the floor-level crowd. Try to find something sturdy to elevate your tripod, like a table, and stand on a chair next to it. Nobody likes seeing the back of heads during a live video.

As a 1-man show, try to keep a usable shot at all times. This means slow pans and zooms (I can't emphasize this enough.) As others have mentioned: manual focus, manual exposure and use 3.2K white balance preset. If it's really dark, try not to boost the gain, but if you have to dont go over 3 or 6dB.

As for audio, you have a few options:

1) Ask the soundman for a post-fader output from the board (sometimes called the Matrix-Out). This will give you a feed of everything going through the house. The feed off the board will often require (2) XLR-Female to XLR-Male cables. These can run into your DVX.

2) You mentioned you have a shotgun mic. If you can get another recording device, setup a friend and a mic stand near the back of the venue to capture the room sound of the show. This can be sync'd later in post, but you WILL have exact sync problems. How to fix this is beyond the scope of this post.

There are a few better ways to do live shows, but as a 1-man crew your options are sometimes limited. I've been doing concerts for years, so if you have any other questions feel free to PM me about it.

And as some shameless self-promotion, here's a show we shot with 4 DVX's recently for the band Emery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SOu9bJQJhU

[Ricpolitics]

Thanks a lot. I really appreciate everyone's responses. I've been doing alright for now, but hopefully I'll be able to get more recording devices later on.