A couple of firsts

[Tim Sewell]

First finished piece using the FS7, first live band video.

This was a bit of a nightmare, to be honest, but it taught me 4 very valuable lessons for next time:

1. Get to the venue before the soundcheck. Set up and crucially...
2. Get the band to do a run-through of the song you're covering, ideally with the stage lighting as it will be later.
3. Get a second static view that you can just leave rolling.
4. During the gig, start rolling and don't stop until the end.

You can probably guess from the above that my major problem wit this piece was lack of coverage, which is why some of the cutaways don't quite fit.

Having said all that, it was a great experience and the band are happy; so on to the next one!

 

[kye]

10 hours ago, Tim Sewell said:

First finished piece using the FS7, first live band video.

This was a bit of a nightmare, to be honest, but it taught me 4 very valuable lessons for next time:

1. Get to the venue before the soundcheck. Set up and crucially...
2. Get the band to do a run-through of the song you're covering, ideally with the stage lighting as it will be later.
3. Get a second static view that you can just leave rolling.
4. During the gig, start rolling and don't stop until the end.

You can probably guess from the above that my major problem wit this piece was lack of coverage, which is why some of the cutaways don't quite fit.

Having said all that, it was a great experience and the band are happy; so on to the next one!

Nice work!

The shooting style was sort of loose and a bit who-gives-a-f*ck which actually suited the song and the way they were singing it.

Coverage is always an issue, which is why I value speed of shooting for my home videos, because it means I end up with more to work with in the edit.

If you're filming rock-n-roll and the dirtier style of music then you could lean in to the grittier style and have angles that are gritty too.  For example, an older camera with a super-wide looking up at the singer, or even a few action cameras plopped around the place would give you lots of options and lots of backups to cut to.  The quality will probably be bad, but you can make them B&W, blur a little, add tonnes of grain, and now they're super-8 angles and things are fresh.  Just find something to mount them to, strap a USB power bank onto each one to give them infinite battery life, put in a large but cheap SD card (which is fine because of the low data rates), and then just set and forget.  Cameras from companies like the SJ-Cam are easily affordable and these days shoot 4K etc.

I'm reminded of Painkiller from Judas Priest:

It is quite obviously dirty and distorted on purpose, even having slow-shutter, radically stretched / warped shots (as short cut-aways), etc.  Even the heavy contrast and radically clipped highlights/shadows lean into the aesthetic.  This is a much heavier song, but there are things that could be learned.

If you want to up your game then it might be worthwhile sitting down and analysing a few great videos like this one, even just watching them at 25% speed on YT reveals a bunch of useful stuff, like lots of inserts where it doesn't matter if the music is sync'd or not (like the singer staring at the camera) which are useful because you can use them anywhere in the edit as long as the movement lines up on the beat, etc.

You can also lean into the effects, like rotating hues, strong filters like Instagram etc.

Also, a 360 camera mounted high and off to the side could also be great - not only would it give a high-angle of the band but can also give great angles of the crowd and show that the band is super-popular (assuming it's a real gig).

I understand all this is subject to the time and budget constraints you have, and margins can be super-tight for this stuff, but just some ideas..

[Tim Sewell]

All good points @kye - and thanks for taking the time to watch. I did, in fact, go for a loose shaky style in the actual shooting as I thought it would suit the style and the song - and I made it even looser with some zooms and pans added in post. This was very much an experiment - I was mainly there to do stills (which in part led to my not having prepped as much as I should have done). Overall I'm satisfied that it's worth me doing some more of these but - as you say - I need to do some deep background on the genre as well!

[kye]

3 hours ago, Tim Sewell said:

All good points @kye - and thanks for taking the time to watch. I did, in fact, go for a loose shaky style in the actual shooting as I thought it would suit the style and the song - and I made it even looser with some zooms and pans added in post. This was very much an experiment - I was mainly there to do stills (which in part led to my not having prepped as much as I should have done). Overall I'm satisfied that it's worth me doing some more of these but - as you say - I need to do some deep background on the genre as well!

Thinking about this more after posting, and after going down a small and enjoyable rabbit hole of watching video of rock bands play live, I think the majority of the effort is getting good angles and then putting in the work in the edit.

I think the camera work during recording is good when you've got lots of good roaming cameras, but you don't need them. If you were doing stills and just setup a bunch of static cameras and hit record, then took stills during the concert, then took all the static footage and edited it together, applying creative filters, cutting as much as the style of music permitted (cutting frenetically for a smooth jazz performance wouldn't work, for example..), and cropping with motion in post (push-in zooms, push-out, pans, and even cropping in on someone and following them like it was shot that way live), could all be combined into a decent end result, despite there being no active cameras during the concert.

But, adding my usual disclaimer, time is money and that stuff all takes time, so if the budget doesn't permit it then that might be out of reach financially even if it's possible artistically and logistically.

I keep thinking that it might be fun to edit music videos, but then I remember that would involve clients and deadlines, and then it doesn't sound like fun anymore!

[Tim Sewell]

55 minutes ago, kye said:

I keep thinking that it might be fun to edit music videos, but then I remember that would involve clients and deadlines, and then it doesn't sound like fun anymore!

Heh - yeah, not too sure I want to do it for money TBH.

But your points about the actual shoot make sense. That's why I mentioned that a lesson learned was that I should have got there for the soundcheck and ensured that they ran through the chosen song at least once, with proper lighting (at this venue in particular the lighting was controlled by the sound guy, so would have been possible) in order to get some different angles.

I had intended to set my A6600 up as a static long shot for the same reason, but when I got there I found a room where there was literally nothing I could secure either a tripod or monopod to, so I couldn't, unfortunately.

[IronFilm]

On 3/8/2024 at 3:16 AM, Tim Sewell said:

3. Get a second static view that you can just leave rolling.

Yup, even just a cheap Panasonic GH4 shooting a wide angle can be better than nothing to cut to if you hit a technical hiccup for a couple of seconds / minutes with your main camera.  (edit: or in this case, your A6600, which I just saw you mention)

Another approach is just to shoot afterwards a bunch of random generic B Roll with your main camera, that you can throw into the edit to patch up any holes with. 

11 hours ago, Tim Sewell said:

I had intended to set my A6600 up as a static long shot for the same reason, but when I got there I found a room where there was literally nothing I could secure either a tripod or monopod to, so I couldn't, unfortunately.

Good reason to get a cardellini and other such clamps. 

11 hours ago, Tim Sewell said:

Heh - yeah, not too sure I want to do it for money TBH.

Ah, you got a Sony FS7 just as "a hobby camera"? 
Amazing, shows how cheap and affordable this older pro Sony camera is getting. 

[Tim Sewell]

13 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Good reason to get a cardellini and other such clamps

I had clamps galore but there wasn’t a single thing to clamp to!

 

13 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Ah, you got a Sony FS7 just as "a hobby camera"? 
Amazing, shows how cheap and affordable this older pro Sony camera is getting. 

140 hours, perfect cosmetic condition with Shape arm, 6 batteries and V mount adapter for GBP695 (all but GBP50 of which I covered with trade in). Pretty much my dream camera!

[BTM_Pix]

1 hour ago, Tim Sewell said:

140 hours, perfect cosmetic condition with Shape arm, 6 batteries and V mount adapter for GBP695 (all but GBP50 of which I covered with trade in).

MPB?

They've had a bunch of them at great prices recently and it is so much bang for the buck.

[Tim Sewell]

2 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

MPB?

London Camera Exchange. I’m still kinda thinking they accidentally put it up at the wrong price!

The ones on MPB at that price were a lot shabbier.

[Tim Sewell]

The biggest thing for me, using it, is the realisation that a huge proportion of the features we pay extra for in hybrid cameras are really just workarounds for the problems caused by using a completely inappropriate form factor for shooting video.