Does this plan sound good for taping live show?

M

mojoprofilms

Active member
So I'm taping a dance show with 2 cameras but only me operating and this is my plan:

HVX200 set to DVCPro 30p, hooked up to firestore taping a wide angle of the 3 hour show without cutting. Set to autoiris and AWB but focus locked. It'll be fresnel lighting of various colours.

DVX100 recording 30p to tape, fully manual, which I operate for closeups.

When I import the footage, can I link the spanned clips on the firestore so that I only have to sync up the 3 tapes to that one master clip and then do my multiangle edit?
 
I'd strongly avoid the auto white balance and iris- you'll wind up with lots of unusable footage. Instead I'd hire someone to operate that camera or just scratch it altogether. Sometimes a 2-camera shoot causes more problems than it solves.

Noah
 
Mojo, I would balance the unmanned camera before the show and do the manned camera at that time as well. Make them both match and don't change them.
My thought is that any colored lighting you do was intended to cast that artistic color. So the viewer shouldn't be bothered by it....unless it changes on only one camera. That would be a problem.
 
Good point Ted...I'll leave it fixed for a neutral exposure and setting.

Are there any problems with shooting a 3 hour clip onto a firestore (assuming standard res)...and then syncing it up with the 3 closeup angles and doing a multiclip?
 
Unfortunately the theatre's union won't allow us 2 operators without paying a whole wack of money. I'll just have to average it and then only cut to the wide when necessary.
 
mojoprofilms said:
So I'm taping a dance show with 2 cameras but only me operating and this is my plan:

HVX200 set to DVCPro 30p, hooked up to firestore taping a wide angle of the 3 hour show without cutting. Set to autoiris and AWB but focus locked. It'll be fresnel lighting of various colours.

DVX100 recording 30p to tape, fully manual, which I operate for closeups.
Click to expand...

I do this frequently, with good success. Not with a firestore, but capturing to FCP.

Some suggestions:

1) Shoot 720p30 on the HVX; you can re-frame in post
2) If you can't white balance manually (as is often the case in theatrical situations), just use one of the presets
3) Set the autoexposure on the HVX to -4 or so if you expect any spotlighting.
4) Shoot SQUEEZE on the DVX

There are two ways of doing this whole thing:
1) Try to shoot perfect 1-camera video, and use the second (wide) camera only to cover screwups
2) Go for risky closeups, etc, that sometimes involve ugly camera motions and/or which focus on only PART of the stage action, and plan to cover with the wide cam.

1) is less risky overall, and takes less post work... and in my experience tends to provide better footage in the end (especially if you're not editing across performances). More and better camera motion is retained, which tends to work out better. 2) works better mainly where there's a lot of really wide staging and your "main" camera shot when using 1) would spend too much time being too similar to the wide shot.

Depending on your physical setup (and I know I'll get reamed for this by the filmies!) you might consider autoexposure on the main cam, too, also biased to -4 or so. The DVX will let you "bias" the exposure using the iris dial when autoexposure is on - and sometimes when you're trying to focus and frame in a live show, having the camera do at least some of the exposre work until you're ready to jump in and tweak it can be very useful. Remote focus/iris controls can help... but I find all the available ones to be far too sensitive and non-linear to be very useful in live situations....

-Barry
 
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