2 week UK Tour with band and my Hvx. Need some advice.

X

Xhenchmen

Active member
Hey guys.

I'm going to be shooting a European tour With a couple of bands with my HVX this coming spring. We're to be traveling by bus and airplane for a couple of weeks. I want to pack light and need some advice on what kind of a package to put together. My HVX package currently consists of:

2 - 4 gig P2 cards
8 - 4hr batteries
1 - MA-66 shotgun
2 - EW-100 G2 Lav's
1 - Litepanel
3 - Litepanel batteries
Rain Coat
Scahtler DV4/2 tripod
Varizoom VZ-LSP camera support system
17" Macbookpro with FCP 5.2
500 gig external HD
3 - Macbookpro batteries

I want to shoot in 720pn and understand that i need to rent more P2 cards. There is also going to be a camera assistant to help me with unloading P2 cards and stuff. But my main concern is the workflow issue with all of this gear listed above.
Should I...

- Rent a ton of cards to get through the day and then dump them into the mac at night using the hvx via firewire?

- Rent the P2 store to solve the whole "cant get my p2 card into my macbookpro" situation. Fill up the P2 store and unload from there throughout the day.

And if i hire some additional Local HVX shooters for the shows. Does the HVX UK model also shoot in NTSC? Or am i going to run into something there? I'd really appreciate your feedback on all of this.
 
Our PAL model won´t shoot NTSC. Ty to get some PAL/50Hz footage to test how it looks when FCP renders it over to your framerates.
I would rent 2 x 8GB which gives you roughly halve an hour in 720pN when using slomo a bit. Then dump to the P2 store. Or you get a USB-to-go drive , but then you need the chance to lay down the camera to offload the P2. If you want or have to be ready all the time the P2 Store will be the best solution. Beware we have different chargers etc here (220V). So you need adapters and transformers for much of your stuff. But maybe someone who had US stuff in Europe can help you out better.
If you need a HVX in southern Germany/Austria area let me know. Haven´t been on a concert-shoot since I did Bloodhound Gang a few years ago.
 
Nice. Thank you for the advice. Please PM me some contact info and I'll fill you in on the details. Where can i find some HVX PAL footage to test this?
 
I did some band touring a few years ago with an DVX...

My advice, pending the kind of footage they want is to just rent 4-6 8gb cards to get you through the day. You will have plenty of time at night to dump them. Might take longer after a long day, but its worth not having to deal with the hassle while shooting. Specially in a very high run and gun environment.
 
will you be doing any concert sound? I'd recommend ambient stereo recording as well as sbd. These are relatively easy to mix post (e.g., 30% SBD and 70% microphone) mix and really improve the sound quality.

A cheap JukeBox (($250 including cables used) for the SBD recording and some basic 16 bit 44K audio rig with say AKG483 hypers (used about $700), an Apogee MiniMe ($600 max used) a laptop, some batteries ($300 max for laptop and pre / AtoD MiniMe) plus cables clocks you in at $2K US max for phenonenal live sound. Stuff is a bit bulky (and you need a bag and a stand) but if the sound guy is good, the room has good acoustics, you will pull a great tape if you set up in front of the sbd.

Check out liveeyetv.com (SilverJews at Showbox) for an example. Not the amazing HVX200s but still decent sound and video for a live concert.
 
I'm not really a fan of the FS100 on such run and gun operations. It just makes it more bulky. And all I need is someone bumping into me and snagging that firewire cable. But thats just my opinion.
 
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