Music / Band Performance Videos - Shot on Canon C70 and Canon R7

[herein2020]

I recently completed a music / band performance video project where I was asked to shoot 3 videos in 2hrs without even seeing the venue. To make it even better, the audio was not pre-recorded so I had to record it live during the band performances. The venue was actually a junkyard with a rehearsal stage in one of the buildings, so definitely challenging all around. Below are the first two videos, I haven't released the 3rd video yet.

The stationary A camera was the Canon C70 shooting 12bit Cinema Raw LT at 30FPS with the Canon EF 24mm F2.8 lens because there was no room to get the camera further back from the stage (very small venue). The B-cam was the Canon R7 with the Canon EF 24-70 F2.8 lens and lens adapter; all shots with the R7 were handheld with IBIS enabled and digital IS disabled. The cover photos were taken with the Canon R7. Both cameras were set at ISO800, CLOG3 Cinema Gamut.

The audio was captured by the C70 using an Azden SGM-250MX shotgun mic. Everything was edited in post with DR and managed color. A light creative LUT was placed over the top at the end. The lighting was all over the place, I did not bring lighting because I thought we were shooting outdoors so I just had to make do with what the venue provided.

Fun fact; the venue was about 90F during the recording so blazing hot and we had to turn the fans off to capture the audio; definitely would not have trusted a camera that overheats for this shoot.

 

 

 

 

[Kisaha]

You should have arranged for a real music mixer to do the heavy job on sound.

I understand you didn't have much to play with, but too much of the little girl!

Did the 2 cameras mixed well on post?

Did you have AF on the R7?

Great job overall!

[newfoundmass]

On 12/15/2022 at 6:42 PM, herein2020 said:

Azden SGM-250MX shotgun mic

A very underrated mic!

 

Thank you for sharing! Always love getting your opinions on stuff!

[herein2020]

1 hour ago, Kisaha said:

You should have arranged for a real music mixer to do the heavy job on sound.

Not possible with the given budget, time and venue. I brought the MixPre6 with me but wouldn't have been able to mic all of the instruments with only 4 XLR channels and no setup time. Only the mics were ran to an amplifier, everything else was live. Plus I'm not a sound guy, I would have later had to mix them in post which would have taken me a long time so once again not possible given the budget. For paying projects, budget is everything, when you start turning it into a passion project you start losing money in the form of time.

I think most music videos are at least half passion projects anyway, you definitely do not shoot them for the money; but they are great to push your creativity.

 

1 hour ago, Kisaha said:

I understand you didn't have much to play with, but too much of the little girl!

Did the 2 cameras mixed well on post?

Did you have AF on the R7?

Great job overall!

I agree, I would have liked to have had more b-roll to add to the footage; but there's that budget thing again. I even thought about shooting some b-roll at a different venue on the way back from the shoot but it was already dark and the rest of the budget was allocated for editing.

The two cameras mix perfectly at least to me. I am not a pixel peeper or Hollywood colorist so all I did was WB them the same, same LOG profile (CLOG3), and exposed the same (both were set at F2.0) to keep it simple.

I used AF on the R7 for all of the indoor shots, I used MF a few times outdoors to get it to focus on what I needed but indoors even in the lowlight it was perfect. I kept it simple as usual and used the center crosshairs only, no fancy face or subject tracking.  All of the band performances was a single take so no camera problems from either one.

The C70 of course was locked down and set to MF, no way would I have trusted that camera with AF in that lighting (yes it really is that bad at lowlight AF) plus I didn't need it anyway with the 24mm lens on it and stationary.

1 hour ago, newfoundmass said:

A very underrated mic!

 

Thank you for sharing! Always love getting your opinions on stuff!

 

Yes, that mic is awesome, I was a little skeptical since I wanted a Rode mic, but that one is one of the few mini XLR shotgun mics available and I hate fiddling with extra wires and adapters if I can avoid it so I got that one instead.  BTW mini-XLR has really grown on me, I think it was a really good decision by Canon and I believe BM did the same thing with their smaller cameras. It really makes the handheld form factor more manageable without dropping all the way down to 3.5mm.  For my Sennheiser wireless receiver, I got this locking mini-XLR cable which pairs with the camera and receiver perfectly.

 

 

[newfoundmass]

54 minutes ago, herein2020 said:

Yes, that mic is awesome, I was a little skeptical since I wanted a Rode mic, but that one is one of the few mini XLR shotgun mics available and I hate fiddling with extra wires and adapters if I can avoid it so I got that one instead.  BTW mini-XLR has really grown on me, I think it was a really good decision by Canon and I believe BM did the same thing with their smaller cameras. It really makes the handheld form factor more manageable without dropping all the way down to 3.5mm.  For my Sennheiser wireless receiver, I got this locking mini-XLR cable which pairs with the camera and receiver perfectly.

I have the XLR version, and have had it for the last 6 or so years. The $200 and under mic market has gotten really competitive in the last couple of years, so there might be better values by now, but I really, really like it and have no need to "upgrade" until it stops working, if that time ever comes. Azden gets overshadowed by Rode and Deity, but they have some really solid gear. 

[herein2020]

5 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

I have the XLR version, and have had it for the last 6 or so years. The $200 and under mic market has gotten really competitive in the last couple of years, so there might be better values by now, but I really, really like it and have no need to "upgrade" until it stops working, if that time ever comes. Azden gets overshadowed by Rode and Deity, but they have some really solid gear. 

I have the Azden SMX-30 which is what I use with the R7, but that mic is why I didn't want another Azden. The audio quality is fine, but the buttons are terrible quality and the one main feature I bought it for (turn off automatically when where is no audio signal) stopped working within about a month of owning it. 

I am pretty happy with the SGM-250MX though; no buttons for them to cut corners on, no batteries, mini XLR straight into the C70, and since it uses phantom power it turns off and on with the camera automatically. I will say though after the SMX-30, if I had found a Rode mini-XLR shotgun mic I would have picked it over the Azden. To me, audio quality wise, they are all good enough for what I need, it is the other smaller details that matter more to me.