Shooting Live Band

C

Cleavage2

Well-known member
Hey,

I've got some work coming up in the next 2 weeks which is to do a 3-camera shoot of this bands gig. I checked out the venue the other night and there's some good room to shoot in, but I was hoping I could get some tips/advice from anyone here who has done the same sort of shoot.

Obviously main things like syncing up the camera settings and trying not to cross in front of other cameras are big ones, but any other things to take note of?

It'll most likely be set up like this:

- 1 static long shot at the back of the room

- 1 (or maybe 2, depending on crowd) roaming cameras for close ups

- 1 (if not suitable for 2 cameras to roam) setup on tripod for a midshot which will zoom/follow action on stage, position will be static but the camera movement won't be.

If anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it very much. Cheers.
 
The biggest problem I've had in the past is trying to convince the lighting dude to keep the lights bright enough to record a usable image.

Last time he didn't listen to me and I got a whole tape of dark "moody" images that were pretty much unusable.
 
Shooting Live Band

Cleavage2 said:
Hey,

I've got some work coming up in the next 2 weeks which is to do a 3-camera shoot of this bands gig. I checked out the venue the other night and there's some good room to shoot in, but I was hoping I could get some tips/advice from anyone here who has done the same sort of shoot.

Obviously main things like syncing up the camera settings and trying not to cross in front of other cameras are big ones, but any other things to take note of?

It'll most likely be set up like this:

- 1 static long shot at the back of the room

- 1 (or maybe 2, depending on crowd) roaming cameras for close ups

- 1 (if not suitable for 2 cameras to roam) setup on tripod for a midshot which will zoom/follow action on stage, position will be static but the camera movement won't be.

If anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it very much. Cheers.
Click to expand...


I did a similar gig couple of years ago. Actually, 10 bands in one day. It was supposed to be multi-camcorder, but the other operators didn't show.

My 1st question to you is: What are you doing for sound? Please, don't use your camcorder mic's.
A cheap solution is to take an output from the mixer board (if there is one) and bring it into another camcorder. You won't use this camcorder for shooting video,
but you will sync it with the other camcorders. Read on.

Next: How are you going to sync the cameras together? Here is a relatively easy solution: Gather all the camcorders together with all lenses facing each other (more or less) in a reduced lighting situation. Start all camcorders recording, including your sound-only unit, and "flash" a still camera in the middle so each camcorder "sees" the flash. This will provide you with a "video sync" in your editing suite.

Camera settings - I presume you'll have all the same cameras, right?

Shots - Don't worry too much about keeping the other operators out of view. This can make things interesting.

Tripod? Forget it. All should wander.
 
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Just did a 5 camera shoot. I rented 4 dvx100s and a SDX900.

locked down a wide shot for the light show
medium shot on sticks for the main stage shot and some medium and closeup shots.
another shot on sticks that stayed on the singer.
2 handelds that roamed. Put some thought into their loation, most ops don't want to step out in front of the performers so they need to know what they can and can't do.

we split the audio feed before the board and took it to an Alesis HD24 and recorded 24 discreet tracks. They rent for about $150 so get a backup at that price. If you have to do a stereo mix, get your own board and sound guy. Live PA mixes are sometimes affected by the live guitar cabinets, so you may not get as much guitar if you feed out of the FOH board.

Yes!! tell the LD that you are shooting a video and video needs light.

We synced to a guy that walked out on stage with a slate. The audience got into that.
Just remind the hand held ops to keep rolling even when they are changing locations. The light show is actually easy to sync to.

If you can, try to get another camera or two, you won't regret it in the edit.

Good luck, wear ear plugs.
 
otari_99 said:
My 1st question to you is: What are you doing for sound? Please, don't use your camcorder mic's.A cheap solution is to take an output from the mixer board (if there is one) and bring it into another camcorder.
Click to expand...

Another option is to hook up a wirless sender on the sound board and a receiver on the master shot cam. My main problem with audio was the insane noise to check my levels even before the band went on. I would suggest you get there early to make sure the levels are good and talk to the sound guy and make sure the line he sends to you gets locked down some way. You need audio from the board!!! I would set XLR #2 on the master cam up with a shotgun into the crowd to mix with what comes from the sound baord and give it a more natual tone. The on board audio from the 2 raoming cams will be garbage in comparison.

otari_99 said:
Tripod? Forget it. All should wander.
Click to expand...

I disagree. You really need a master shot no matter what, even if it does move at all the whole time. This is your safegaurd that you'll always have to go back to if one or both of the roaming cameras have unusable footage/operator takes a piss/battery runs out etc.

I also found it extremely hard to white balance correctly in the club so I went into the kitchen and used the flourescent light they had which I think threw my colors off a bit.

When trying to get good color on the band members I was constantly adjusting to get the best contrast for all the colored lights they were throwing on them, but If I were to do it again i would just lower the saturation in camera to mute the color extremes.

Have fun

-Kevin
 
Recording audio in camera??? Haha, you must think I'm new to this! We will be getting the audio recorded out of the mixer, the lead singer will be hooking that up with the audio guy because he knows them, then I will sync in up in post.

We're shooting with one DVX-100b and 2 DVX-100a's, and I understand that from my 100b I can transfer settings from it to the other cameras? Or is that only to other 100b models?

I just watched an edited 3-camera live video, the master shot was on tripod but was moving, so it wasn't just a still shot, I think I'll get my other operator to do that.

I will talk to the lighting guy to make sure we get enough light into the picture. Would it be best to keep it on manual iris and keep it open at all times to get as much light as possible?

Thanks for the quick replies!
 
PUNCH said:
we split the audio feed before the board and took it to an Alesis HD24 and recorded 24 discreet tracks. They rent for about $150 so get a backup at that price. If you have to do a stereo mix, get your own board and sound guy. Live PA mixes are sometimes affected by the live guitar cabinets, so you may not get as much guitar if you feed out of the FOH board.
Click to expand...

^^^That's sweet.

I was an operator at a show at the Black Cat about a year ago -- I think we had 8 DVX100(a)s. There was a wide shot on a jib, one dedicated camera on every member of the band and then a couple roaming. The finished product turned out nice.
 
otari_99 said:
I did a similar gig couple of years ago. Actually, 10 bands in one day. It was supposed to be multi-camcorder, but the other operators didn't show.

My 1st question to you is: What are you doing for sound? Please, don't use your camcorder mic's.
A cheap solution is to take an output from the mixer board (if there is one) and bring it into another camcorder. You won't use this camcorder for shooting video,
but you will sync it with the other camcorders. Read on.

Next: How are you going to sync the cameras together? Here is a relatively easy solution: Gather all the camcorders together with all lenses facing each other (more or less) in a reduced lighting situation. Start all camcorders recording, including your sound-only unit, and "flash" a still camera in the middle so each camcorder "sees" the flash. This will provide you with a "video sync" in your editing suite.

Camera settings - I presume you'll have all the same cameras, right?

Shots - Don't worry too much about keeping the other operators out of view. This can make things interesting.

Tripod? Forget it. All should wander.
Click to expand...

For the 100B you can directly sync to any camera that has a DVout and free-run timecode (for more info see the DVX book that came with the camera). The 100A you can only sync with other 100As via remote-start of free run (sorry 100A owners...you know who you are ;-). We just did a trial of this over the weekend with a 100A and two 100B's. It's pretty sweet.
 
wideshot.jpg


Can't beat a good locked down wideshot. Just set and forget (but don't forget to change the tape) and let your camera ops work more interesting angles.
 
Cleavage2 said:
Recording audio in camera??? Haha, you must think I'm new to this! We will be getting the audio recorded out of the mixer, the lead singer will be hooking that up with the audio guy because he knows them, then I will sync in up in post.

We're shooting with one DVX-100b and 2 DVX-100a's, and I understand that from my 100b I can transfer settings from it to the other cameras? Or is that only to other 100b models?

I just watched an edited 3-camera live video, the master shot was on tripod but was moving, so it wasn't just a still shot, I think I'll get my other operator to do that.

I will talk to the lighting guy to make sure we get enough light into the picture. Would it be best to keep it on manual iris and keep it open at all times to get as much light as possible?

Thanks for the quick replies!
Click to expand...

I've done a fair amount of "audience taping" of bands, including loads of soundboard pulls. One tip on the audio front is to not only record the soundboard, but to also get a second source of ambient sound, preferrably a pair of split omni or XY/DIN/DINA/NOS cardioid condenser mics on stage. The soundboard by itself can be too clean, and in some instances can have terrible balance due the FOH sound engineer's job being sound reinforcement (and not making a good line out mix) -- after all their job is to make the venue sound good, not your recording. Now if you have a cooperative FOH that has time to do with the mix, they can give you an "aux send" where they can mix it differently than what's coming out of the PA. But even then, it's best to have a second ambient source to mix in with the board anyway, it sweetens the board by picking up some of the room, it'll help with balance issues (board can easily be all vocals and no drums depending on size of venue and other issues), and sometimes most importantly, even if the board sounds great, the ambient mics will pick up much more of the audience (especially omnis), which you can mix louder in between songs to give it a much more "live" feeling. Anyway, just a thought. In audience-taping land, this is done all of the time and is called making a "matrix."
 
Good thread, Interesting points here. I have some friends in a band that might want to record their gigs. I was thinking of a 3 camera set up with probably two roaming cams. How do you coordinate the operators so that they don't capture the same footage? Do you restrict them to shooting only the singer, guitarist, or only the right side of the stage, etc... Thanks!
 
Johnnyfive, I don't think it's so much about restricting each operator, but at any given time it's unlikely that a roaming camera will be on one subject (e.g. singer only) for more than 5-10 secs) so I imagine there's got to be a lot of variation in the shots and the content of the shots as well for the roaming cameras - then it's easy enough if something doesn't match in the cutting room to just cut back to the long static shot, then back into a roaming shot when it's appropriate.

Or is this completely wrong? Maybe someone who's done a 3-camera shoot can help me out with this bit.
 
True. Thats a good point. And also I thought later that they would be capturing different angles anyways since you could place them on opposite sides of the stage. Thanks!
 
I think everybody had explained everything but I would prefer to have a videonics mixer and another sub-mixer especially to separate the sound from the main sound mixer board and the ambience omni's. Your sound man can have better control and double checks the audio output. Run all your video cables via an av mixer to make things run smoothly. It would be better to have a small monitor for every single camera and also the master mixed output.

You need to be both as video switcher and director. You may call the shots thru two-way radios with the camera operators wearing headsets. This will enable them to alert you while they are changing their batteries, so that you can shift the shots to another camera. You also need another back-up recorder, just in-case. It's very risky to have only a single recording source.

Remember to have an independent tape at least in the master camera for emergency cases. It would be better to have somebody to follow the roaming camera operator to make sure his camera cable is not being stepped on to by anybody.

You can even project it live on-screen for a more exciting show.

I've been doing quite a number of live shows and never failed even when the master mixed tapes were giving some hiccups.

Good luck!
 
tjglfr said:
Is it possible to record from the board into a laptop using SoungForge or Sony Vegas?
Click to expand...
People do this all of the time, but there are things to watch out for. For starters, you'll need to bring the SBD's outs (possibly XLR, RCA, or 1/4") into a form that your lappy can handle (typically mini 1/8" TRS). Also, be warned that the A/D in your stock soundcard probably sucks, which can be remedied by a better soundcard (PCMCIA card) or interface (USB or FW). Also, you may need to pad the inputs with attenuators if the SBD is too hot and you can't turn it down. But most importantly, you can have problems with dropped samples if you don't have a fast enough drive or your drive is fragmented or you have too many background processes or services running during your recording. You should run some tests of 10+ minutes or more before relying on this approach, and if this needs to be bombproof, you might want to try using a stand-alone recorder. But it does and will work if you watch out for some of these potential gotchas.
 
When you record audio into a separate machine or from a mixer directly into the laptop what do you use to synch that audio with the video in post?

Also what happens if a camera runs out of battery, and then the battery is replaced; how do you synch that camera with the rest of the cameras once it's been cut off like that?
 
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