operating camera advice without a second person

O

offbeatbryce

Well-known member
I am trying to jump start my business for film in my local area to film concerts and music videos. I know all the ins and out of how to organize these events for shooting however I am a one man show. I have a friend that sometimes can film with me but other than that I got no one.

What would your advice for setting up a second camera that's stationary and have it look decent so i don't have to operate it? I want operate my main camera but getting lots of shots, pans etc and walking around handheld.

For this second camera should I put it in manual and zoom in all the way and focus then leave it zoomed to where I want?

What do I do about the F-Stop? Since I won't be operating the camera full time I can't change the exposure if the stage gets brighter or darker.

I was thinking about just setting it to Aperture or Shutter Priority mode but had a slight fear of something going wrong that way.

My second camera I would be using has Auto Focus, Auto Fast Focus and Manual Focus.

Any suggestions would be great.
 
offbeatbryce said:
..... For this second camera should I put it in manual and zoom in all the way and focus then leave it zoomed to where I want? ...
Click to expand...

The unmanned camera will be a wide shot, so set up the shot, focus, and lock it down. A second way to go is if you trust your autofocus, use it.
 
Hi offbeat,

Ya didn't say what cam your using for the second and what's its ability. That aside, experiment a lot before the gig to know what you'll most likely get from the cam is the best way to help answer your Q. in my view.

A BIG watch out is that cams position in respect to other people or environment changes during the recording. Could they block, knock, trip or interfere in anyway and at any time with it? If there is a possibility of any interference, know it will unfortunately happen sooner or later.

Best of cautious luck!
 
I did this many many times for rock concerts locally. (3 cams and just me)
1 cam wide catching the whole stage from the front.
1 cam side/front stage focused on the drummer only.
Me and the other camera from the front catching lead guitar and vocals panning, close ups etc.

one thing I learned quickly is manual focus on the unaccompanied cameras. Strobe lights make autofocus go crazy.
 
Chris Johnston said:
I did this many many times for rock concerts locally. (3 cams and just me)
1 cam wide catching the whole stage from the front.
1 cam side/front stage focused on the drummer only.
Me and the other camera from the front catching lead guitar and vocals panning, close ups etc.

one thing I learned quickly is manual focus on the unaccompanied cameras. Strobe lights make autofocus go crazy.
Click to expand...

Did you ever move the stationary cameras? How did you manage to get enough with the camera you were using to not make it boring?
 
offbeatbryce said:
Did you ever move the stationary cameras? How did you manage to get enough with the camera you were using to not make it boring?
Click to expand...

That one is easy, even I can figure it out, you use the wide shot from the fixed camera as a cutaway between the shots from the mobile camera. They are usually only a second or two that connect the close ups.
 
Rhino EVO Motion Control Slider for the wide. Make sure to put a few objects in the foreground. If you buy the Rhino Arc, the camera will even pan as the slider moves, you can set ping pong setup where it will just motor between your starting and ending position. Killer production value added for less than $2k and you can set it up yourself and walk away to go get your other angles. Max weight is 15lbs I believe so good for most DSLRs, C100, possibly a C300 if it's setup for lighter weight. https://rhinocameragear.com/collections/slider-bundles
 
puredrifting said:
Rhino EVO Motion Control Slider for the wide. Make sure to put a few objects in the foreground. If you buy the Rhino Arc, the camera will even pan as the slider moves, you can set ping pong setup where it will just motor between your starting and ending position. Killer production value added for less than $2k and you can set it up yourself and walk away to go get your other angles. Max weight is 15lbs I believe so good for most DSLRs, C100, possibly a C300 if it's setup for lighter weight. https://rhinocameragear.com/collections/slider-bundles
Click to expand...

Interesting so Rhino have seemingly have parallaxed motion control kits now. Does it work well? And most importantly it noisy?
 
I run into the same problem as you when it comes to shooting no/low budget live music videos. I use my older cameras and set my two static cams to manual and have my cam on manual except for auto focus. I do a lot of zooming and panning with my camera and use the static cams as fill in shots. I usually have my Zoom H4 Audio recorder plugged into the club mixer on line level out and use the camera mics (with manual settings) mixed in with the line level out from the mixer in post to get the club sound. This video was shot by myself with 3 Sony Z1U cams with no Zoom H4 since the club wanted to charge me $150 for line level out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RWan5hCaAs
 
SrtBrad said:
I run into the same problem as you when it comes to shooting no/low budget live music videos. I use my older cameras and set my two static cams to manual and have my cam on manual except for auto focus. I do a lot of zooming and panning with my camera and use the static cams as fill in shots. I usually have my Zoom H4 Audio recorder plugged into the club mixer on line level out and use the camera mics (with manual settings) mixed in with the line level out from the mixer in post to get the club sound. This video was shot by myself with 3 Sony Z1U cams with no Zoom H4 since the club wanted to charge me $150 for line level out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RWan5hCaAs
Click to expand...

I was referring to the drumming clip in this thread and why the wide shot had the drummers face washed out.
 
Andrew Stone said:
Interesting so Rhino have seemingly have parallaxed motion control kits now. Does it work well? And most importantly it noisy?
Click to expand...

Andrew, I just received the Rhino last week and used it on a real job with a real client day before yesterday. I have not even downloaded the footage yet, got home last night (it was an out of town shoot) but I walked away very impressed with the Evo Motion/Arc system. It is much easier to setup and use than I thought it would be. Very simple, intuitive interface. You set your in point wherever you want (I am using the 42" slider version) and click the in point. Then the camera moves to the other end of the slider and you use a dial to rotate the camera to your desired framing. Turn on looping, hit go and walk away. It will go back to your in point and begin the move. The motor is not as silent as I had hoped but it was totally usable placed 6' away from talent with a boom and a hard wired lavaliere in a fairly quiet meeting room at a resort. I could hear it with my ear when I was 8' away from it but through my headphones, I really didn't notice it. You might hear it a little bit in a VERY small and very quiet room but it operates at mostly higher frequency that I believe I could easily remove with NR tools. As long as the room you are shooting in has some "air tone", I don't believe you will ever hear it. If the room you are shooting in is very dead and sound insulated, I still don't think it would be a problem unless the slider is located less than two feet from the talent's mic and that would not work very well visually. Go on You Tube, there are videos people have posted and Rhino, using the same setup in a small room and with mics placed pretty close to the setup. It's not silent but overall, it is usable level.

A couple of caveats, I was setting up the slider for our first shot. The EVO Motion controller mounts on a magnetic tripod plate, the motor has four magnets you can attach it. The system also comes with a tripod plate on a velcro strap you can put on a tripod leg to mount eh controller so it is facing you instead on the side of the morotor which will rarely be facing you, which is what I did. Someone accidentally bumped the tripod leg, knocking the control unit off. The control unit attaches to the motor using a regular CAT 5 Ethernet flat cable. Unfortunately the cable is only about two feet long and when the control unti feel, it put all of it's force in the CAT 5 connection into the motor. The good news was that the control unit wasn't harmed in the fall because it was hanging by the cable. The bad news was that the CAT 5 wiring actually separated from the CAT 5 plug. The slider only comes with one cable so it you break it, you are out of business. Fortunately, the IT department at the resort we were shooting at was able to give me a short CAT 5 cable to use and we were back up and running. Same concern about the small coiled 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable that allows the EVO ARC aead to talk to the Motion controller. It is small and cheap, realtively fragile looking. Same with the pully belts for the slider, they work fine but if they ever snapped or accidentally were pulled on unpacking the slider and broke, you would be out of business.

My advice would be if you order an EVO Motion/Arc bundle, order two extra CAT 5 cables, two extra Arc to to Motion cables and two extra pully belts for each side slider you order (I have both the 42" for using the Motion/Arc and the 24" I ordered with the flywheel for running and gunning/travel, etc.) I ordered all of the extra belts and cables, they were cheap, about $35.00 with shipping. The other challenge is leveling, the Arc head needs to be level to function correctly. I have two tripods that I mounted the system on but of course, to save weight and cost, I didn't attach the two tripod to two levling tripod heads. So leveling the setup is a bit of a pain but not un-doable. It would be easier with two leveling heads but that would add a few hundred dollars and weight and bulk for traveling so I didn't.

Overall, I love the system. Its not perfect but the shots looked good, very usable, client was very impressed once we set it up and showed them how well it worked. I use the Canon 80D with it's dual pixel autofocus, once it locked onto the talent's face, it tracked focus beautifully. I actually had a second camera operator but I had to have him go shoot b-roll while I shot the interviews so the EVO Motion/Arc worked pretty well as my third camera op on the job. IMHO, this would be a perfect setup for live music as long as you have a safe, out of the way spot to set it up, people don't stand in front of it and block your view, etc.
 
SrtBrad said:
I was referring to your original post.
Click to expand...

okay,

Can you help me understand why professional concert clips have weird changes between them?

Here are examples I've found.

(please don't judge the music as I'm just looking at camera work here)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XrZvR-UAuY

This clip starts of with a wide shot with bright faces but then the closeup of Joe Jonas has his face all blue. Shouldn't the closeup be the same color as his face is from the wide shot?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOXSl9p-oWA


Here you have a wide shot of the drummer and face is more blown out compared to the rest of the cameras. Wouldn't it be better if the wide shot didn't have the face brighter than the rest of the cameras?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20Ov0cDPZy8

This one has John Mayer with his skin tone changing slightly lighter to darker depending on the shot.

There are all from professional filmmakers. My main question is this. Can you ever get a concert performance to look 100 percent perfect from shot to shot or is it close to impossible?
 
offbeatbryce said:
....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XrZvR-UAuY

This clip starts of with a wide shot with bright faces but then the closeup of Joe Jonas has his face all blue. Shouldn't the closeup be the same color as his face is from the wide shot?
Click to expand...

That is a matter of camera and light placement. There are blue spots in the background just out of frame (and sometimes in frame) that caused that image to flare with blue. That may have been an artistic choice to have that look.

offbeatbryce said:
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOXSl9p-oWA

Here you have a wide shot of the drummer and face is more blown out compared to the rest of the cameras. Wouldn't it be better if the wide shot didn't have the face brighter than the rest of the cameras?
Click to expand...

Yes, that was unfortunate. But that's what happens sometimes when you have to set up cameras in advance without an operator. He may not have had the chance to set the exposure with the drummer sitting in place and perhaps had to guess at the exposure.
offbeatbryce said:
.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20Ov0cDPZy8

This one has John Mayer with his skin tone changing slightly lighter to darker depending on the shot.
Click to expand...

[edit - this comment deleted and rewritten] Please provide 2 or 3 time references in that video that you are comparing. I'm not sure which shots you are talking about.

offbeatbryce said:
.
There are all from professional filmmakers. My main question is this. Can you ever get a concert performance to look 100 percent perfect from shot to shot or is it close to impossible?
Click to expand...
Yes, and it depends on what you think is perfect. You showed two examples that I thought were fine, but you didn't like them.

As was discussed in another thread, in order to get a good film, it takes full cooperation of the theatrical show producers and the film producers to get the lighting such that it can be shot and look decent. It also takes a lot of rehearsal time to get it set up right. It may be that the show producers don't care about the film and want to light the show for the audience without regard to how difficult that makes it to shoot.

Ploping down cameras and setting exposure is going to get modest results. But that's what smaller budget productions have to do.
 
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puredrifting said:
Andrew, I just received the Rhino last week and used it on a real job with a real client day before yesterday. The motor is not as silent as I had hoped but it was totally usable placed 6' away from talent with a boom and a hard wired lavaliere in a fairly quiet meeting room at a resort. I could hear it with my ear when I was 8' away from it but through my headphones, I really didn't notice it. You might hear it a little bit in a VERY small and very quiet room but it operates at mostly higher frequency that I believe I could easily remove with NR tools.

A couple of caveats... Someone accidentally bumped the tripod leg, knocking the control unit off. The control unit attaches to the motor using a regular CAT 5 Ethernet flat cable. Unfortunately the cable is only about two feet long and when the control unti feel, it put all of it's force in the CAT 5 connection into the motor. The good news was that the control unit wasn't harmed in the fall because it was hanging by the cable. The bad news was that the CAT 5 wiring actually separated from the CAT 5 plug. Same concern about the small coiled 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable that allows the EVO ARC aead to talk to the Motion controller. It is small and cheap, realtively fragile looking. Same with the pully belts for the slider, they work fine but if they ever snapped or accidentally were pulled on unpacking the slider and broke, you would be out of business.

My advice would be if you order an EVO Motion/Arc bundle, order two extra CAT 5 cables, two extra Arc to to Motion cables and two extra pully belts for each side slider you order (I have both the 42" for using the Motion/Arc and the 24" I ordered with the flywheel for running and gunning/travel, etc.) I ordered all of the extra belts and cables, they were cheap, about $35.00 with shipping. The other challenge is leveling, the Arc head needs to be level to function correctly. I have two tripods that I mounted the system on but of course, to save weight and cost, I didn't attach the two tripod to two levling tripod heads. So leveling the setup is a bit of a pain but not un-doable. It would be easier with two leveling heads but that would add a few hundred dollars and weight and bulk for traveling so I didn't.

Overall, I love the system... client was very impressed once we set it up and showed them how well it worked. I use the Canon 80D with it's dual pixel autofocus, once it locked onto the talent's face, it tracked focus beautifully. I actually had a second camera operator but I had to have him go shoot b-roll while I shot the interviews so the EVO Motion/Arc worked pretty well as my third camera op on the job. IMHO, this would be a perfect setup for live music as long as you have a safe, out of the way spot to set it up, people don't stand in front of it and block your view, etc.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the thorough write up! Yes, I am a big believer in buying pairs of cables and fragile parts but the reminder to get two of all those things is highly appreciated. Without seeing the unit in action, I would consider getting high quality CAT 5 cables of differing lengths. They are not expensive and I would consider moving the unit to a lower position closer to the ground, if not on it. Same thing with the 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable. I would consider getting a couple of more using different lengths and better quality, if that would help.

I've got 2 sliders at the moment. A Dana Dolly which is great but the time and space involved in setup is often an issue. The interia it has from the weight is great for smooth hand operated moves. Have an Edelkrone Smart Slider that I impulsively bought. Don't use it much. Looked seriously at the Smart System slider with motor and time lapse control. Built like a brick out building but a magnitude more expensive than your Rhino system and as far as I know it doesn't have the parallax move thing sorted out... yet. That may come at NAB 2017. Rhino system looks VERY good and your real world write up is convincing. Thanks again.
 
Andrew Stone said:
Thanks for the thorough write up! Yes, I am a big believer in buying pairs of cables and fragile parts but the reminder to get two of all those things is highly appreciated. Without seeing the unit in action, I would consider getting high quality CAT 5 cables of differing lengths. They are not expensive and I would consider moving the unit to a lower position closer to the ground, if not on it. Same thing with the 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable. I would consider getting a couple of more using different lengths and better quality, if that would help.

I've got 2 sliders at the moment. A Dana Dolly which is great but the time and space involved in setup is often an issue. The interia it has from the weight is great for smooth hand operated moves. Have an Edelkrone Smart Slider that I impulsively bought. Don't use it much. Looked seriously at the Smart System slider with motor and time lapse control. Built like a brick out building but a magnitude more expensive than your Rhino system and as far as I know it doesn't have the parallax move thing sorted out... yet. That may come at NAB 2017. Rhino system looks VERY good and your real world write up is convincing. Thanks again.
Click to expand...

It's funny, a friend of mine has the Dana and we used it on a TV pilot we shot last year. Problem was, we were shooting in a very small living room with three cameras and the Dana with the nice steel rolling stands he has it mounted on is huge, it totally was in the way and we all had to repeatedly crawl underneath it to get to the talent, backlight adjustment, etc. I told him to sell his Dana and get this Rhino, although to be fair, the Rhino with the Motion and the Arc, I believe the Arc head maxes out at 10lbs so you cannot mount large, heavy pro cameras on it. With a tripod head, it would probably max out with a C100, possibly a C300 MKI? The Dana is still capable with bigger heavier cameras like REDs and Arris. Two different beasts. I neglected to mention also that the Rhino EVO also is just as capable with time lapse, it even has a cable to trigger your camera so that it will only snap an image when the slider is parked, avoiding motion blur in your time lapse footage from the camera taking the picture as the EVO motor moves the camera. I have not tried time lapse yet but I will be. Having a parallax system for time lapses could be pretty fun, lots of possibilities.
 
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