Concert videography

Since we both use some of the same cameras, this might be useful to the post asking about editing: I use Premiere and edit on a Mac. I am doing what you do; I just import the file from the capture device and actually it all appears instantly, no waiting for audio, and away I go. As far as I know it is not transcribing or converting the format to anything else, and the HD video is gorgeous. I’ve sent thousands of DVD’s out and no one complains about video quality.

On HUGE WARNING to anyone that is looking to upgrade or start out. I cannot believe Adobe did this, but the new version of Premiere Elements...hold on to your hat...has REMOVED the ability to output/author to DVD HD! Can you believe that?? And they didn’t tell people that up front. So, folks like me paid for the upgrade, downloaded it and then a couple things would happen. First, if you were in the middle of a project it imported it and THEN converted it to the new format. Meaning you could not export and author to DVD HD as you assumed you could since the past versions allowed this, and you also could not convert it back to he old version, so essentially you had to start our project all over again. You should see the blog about this. What a cheap shot on Adobe’s part. The second thing that could happen is you start a brand new project, as I did, and then you finish it and THEN find out you cannot export to HD. Talk about a shameful money grab, from a company we all used to trust. No more.

So, the only option was to try and find a boxed version from a previous edition, import it, and start all over again (as I believe it deleted my old version and for some reason I was unable to reinstall my boxed version from last year). What a bunch of crooks if you ask me. How they thought this would help their business long term I couldn’t say. Rumor is they didn’t have the license rights, or wouldn’t pay for them, to continue offering the HD option. So, you had a huge block of artists that had put hours and hours of work into a video project and then, poof, you might as well have lost it due to a hard drive failure (I’ve had that happen...not fun...but now I backup obsessively).

So, all that to say do not buy the 2018 version of Premiere Elements, and probably not the full version either.

 

LOL! I do photography for theatre and bought a mono stick to do still photography. What a ridiculous idea! Kids running all over the stage. Talk about a device hindering your ablity to do your job! It went right into the pile of “unuseable devices” we all have if you have been doing this long enough! So I can see why you stated that.

 

If I were to post an isolated shot of my handheld camera, it would look like I had strapped it to the head of a particularly excitable puppy - intense focus for 30 seconds at a time, then wildly swinging in one direction, then another, then another. And I honestly have to be ready for anything, like when this kid jumped off the stage, and I had to find him.

 

I shot this. I was a photographer and filmmaker, starting as a kid. I hustled at photography, became the school district's student photographer, shot weddings, graduations, plays, filmed a promotion football film for my university (Lehigh), became WSAN in Allentown's concert photographer for five years, and finally became assistant to an Architectural Digest photographer, and basic have shot my entire life. On father's day two or so years ago I shot this. I hand hold, and constantly move, looking for shots. I actually almost snuffed it from heat exhaustion in the bathroom at the end of the show, I dehydrated running around so much, drenched, I thought I was having a heart attact. Ha. I would have made a good war correspondent -- when I have something to shoot, it's an obsession. Nothing stops me.

My tip: Never turn off your camera during a show even if you don't have it trained on anyone, because you want that UNBROKEN AUDIO to cut with later. This is one song that I later spliced my cutaways into.

 

I've tried other tools, and this one, for my specific purpose, really seems to be the best. I'm sure it wouldn't work well for long-form narrative, or complex compositing effects work, but for my use which is 98% cuts, 1% dissolves and 1% split-screens, reframing and some basic color correction, it's the best one. And thankfully, they have not gone the subscription model - I bought it, I own it, and even though they have an Edius 9 and probably an Edius 10 by now, they have not taken away any capabilities. I'm on update 8.53.3262 which will give you an idea of how dedicated they have been to maintaining their existing customer base. Until I need more advanced capabilities, like 4K and HDR, I can keep using what I have. Canopus, the original developer, was bought by Grass Valley, a serious broadcast equipment manufacturer. They did so to sell more network storage and playout hardware and seem to have left the developers alone otherwise, and Grass Valley customers expect 24/7/365 reliability. I downloaded Blackmagic Resolve, on a fresh installation of Windows 10, fired it up and it worked. I installed a few other programs and it never started up again - as the saying goes "aint nobody got time for that."

 

Welcome to the brotherhood! I did a 10.5 hour show...with walking pneumonia.

I know! I have the biggest batteries I can get so I can shoot for at least two hours at a stretch. Occasionally I'll get offered video from a parent, and inevitably they'll have stopped the camera on all the songs their kid wasn't on. Which, equally inevitably, means they started the camera after the song started, which makes syncing ten times harder - the best sync point is the drummer tapping their sticks to establish the time.

When I have people volunteer to shoot handheld, I have to emphasize just how much I don't want them to stop - for anything. I almost wish I had a molly-guard over the Record button.

 

This is really quite exceptional. I'm impressed. Very nice job

 

Those are nice, but I was looking for something a bit smaller, maybe more square like. It looks too obvious, and some bands/venues may frown upon it, though no one has ever asked me to turn off the camera. It looks like a good option for bands that are cool with it. I can always use the nikon for situations where I think I can I might be denied. The coolpix I have doesn't have that bad of a mic. I'm pretty sure I've shared clips here over the years. Worst case, I can always use my sound pro cmc8/sbs11/r9 combo and lay it over the sound from the camera.

The camera does shoot in 1920x1080, though I'm not too sure of the pixels. The mics generally don't overload, but doesn't always do a good job of capturing everything well, though I can say the same about my audio rig. Position is just as important as capturing sound, as it is in video.
As for the batteries, I carry a spare or two!

 

Mixed lighting is a pain in the ass -- very tough to deal with, and it's a constant problem for post in rock concerts. Often, the kind of lighting that works great in a live stage presentation is not optimal for camera (and vice versa).

 

I am utterly at the mercy of the lighting. The exact same cameras can look wonderful or terrible totally depending on the lighting, and if I have a choice of venues to shoot a particular band I'm going to go to the one with the best lighting every time. The back lights, that make everybody look great towards the front of the stage, poison the lens of my drummer GoPro. I have to figure out some sort of French flag to keep that from happening.

 

Thank you. The Union Transfer has excellent equipment and a top crew. And the band is amazing.

 

Shifting light colors, the photographers nightmare. But I learned back in the days when we did crazy things like shooting black and white film that as soon as the BLUE SPOTLIGHTS come on, start shooting! The blues always provided the best, brightest light for B&W!

 

I dabble a little, here's an old one of mine shot on two Sony a57s and a Canon C100, I actually prefer the Sony colour, the Canon wasn't mine, I've now switched to a pair of Panasonic domestic 4K camcorders, a VXF 980 and a 990 which for the two cost less than a single DSLR with a half decent lens, give me 4K, more flexibility and won't cut off every 30 minutes or overheat, unfortunately I haven't had a chance to use them in anger yet, I also have a Sony a68 for a third camera. For audio I always try and plug my Korg MR100 into the desk and use Rode Stereo Videomic Pros for in camera audio with a Tascam DR 40 and DR 60 in between the camera, experience has taught me that you can never have too much audio, it always seems to be the thing that goes wrong. I do need to commit to learning editing, but as my next door neighbour is a professional editor I've been very lazy on that front.

 

I set all my cameras to "tungsten" now, rather than trying to white balance at the venue. Edius has a color correction tool that lets me fix white balance to some extent after the fact.

 

While filming can be a real blast, it all comes together in editing! You’re right...sound can be the difficulty. But most editors have a lot of tools to help smooth things over. My point: if you can get comfortable with editing software, you may find you will enjoy that the most! If can look intimidating, but they have really got it to the point where it’s pretty darn easy. Adobe Premiere Elements has four or five different levels of “assistance” while you edit. They go from “I will pracitically do it for you” to it releasing you to do your thing. It’s very easy to create the menus for DVD, and exporting is a breeze. Best of all, it’s cheap and your’s, no subscription service. Until you get to Chris’ level where you might have a cup of monkeys full of video content where you want to see it all running on various screens to make editing choices (that isn’t going to happen with 2-3 cameras...that is manageable on a time line) almost anything will work. I suggest Premiere because it’s incredibly easy to use, and you can use in on a Mac or PC, and it’s stupid cheap for what it does (under $100....but don’t get Elements 2018....it will not output to DVD in HD...2017 is perfectly fine...you can likely get a used copy on eBay).

I do not recommend using Apple’s Final Cut if you are a Mac user. I used it for years and loved it. Then, they literally blew it up and completely started over after it was THE perfect app. It has a very proprietary way of laying out your video, and though I hear it’s intuitive IF you have never learned anything else, I think it’s better to learn how to do it in a way most other software works (traditional timeline) in case you don’t like what you are using and want to jump ship to something else, as most use the same principle timeline based editing protocol. Like me, many have said it is very hard to learn Final Cut if you are used to a traditional time line. I’ll never “forgive” Apple for dumping that on us, and not allowing you to use the old one I paid $1300 if you upgraded OSX. You are very fortunate that you have a friend that is good at it...just watching him will probably be enough to compel you to take the plunge.

Hope the info helps, and encourages you to start editing. You’ll get a real kick out of it.

 

Interesting. I used to bring a white balance color disc when I was using the previous version of Canon’s cameras (XL/GL). It was an absolute must to get the right colors. An FYI for others here, you and I are now using a pretty current version of Canon’s cameras and I noticed they are doing a superb job filming with accurate color, so I don’t even bother white balancing any more. I am starting to stretch out myself and use other exact white balance settings, as you are doing now. I will try tungsten; I only shoot indoors so I don’t know how much different that will be to outdoor concerts, but I have the same challenges. It’s pitch black and I’m at the mercy of the lighting crew from there on out! But boy, the magic bullet is shooting in “spotlight” mode...that has bailed me out repeatedly and it works very, very well.

 

Yes, editing is definitely something I need to learn it's just working out which software will work for me and be affordable, I don't want to find out six months down the road that I've invested in software that doesn't do what I want or even worse I just don't get on with, I don't want to pay for lots of features I won't need either.

 

My thing is to have as many cameras as I can, simply because there may be a dozen kids on that stage. They're always at least three guitars, and generally 3 or 4 vocalists. Since I shoot either entirely by myself or with the assistance of my wife, I have to have coverage without anybody moving the camera. So the bunch of moderately priced cameras it's the best approach for me rather than two or three much more expensive cameras. Also, I have no idea what's going to happen from second to second. Here's the Oak Park School of Rock kids doing Alexander Hamilton from the musical, and there are at least six vocalists. So I would be cutting from wide to left, center, right or close up, while I'm swinging the handheld to get whoever's actually singing at that moment.

 

The last concert I did was a four man job.
One Canon C100 on sticks in the back getting a wide. With 3 camera ops running Canon 5D mark II’s handheld/shoulder mounted.
One guy running sound near the mixer.

They were all prime lenses. Which helps keep the look consistent. But ****ty for the guy stuck with the 85mm. Hard to keep that stabilized.

It was a smaller, more intimate concert. So there was plenty of coverage.

The tough part is the 12 minute max filming time on the DSLR’s. Makes for a tougher time syncing in the editing.

MarkIII’s would be better with 30min recording times.

But would prefer all c100-300’s.

 

Tungsten is a good match for theatrical LED lights, which are generally set to match PAR lamps.

 

I've never tried to shoot a concert with a DSLR, the time limits would drive me insane. My standard load in a HF-S200 is 2 hours, 56 minutes on a 32 gig SD card, and I carry 24 of them due to the length of the shows I do. I can't imagine trying to keep track of media if I had to swap out a memory card every 30 minutes - or even worse every 12. Depth of field isn't worth that much to me. Since I'm shooting music, I don't want to ever miss a solo because I have to swap media.

What am I missing? What don't I get with the sort of camcorders I use that I would get with a DSLR?

 

I've tried a slew of the PC apps (except Avid) and none of them makes me happy like Final Cut Pro. Of course, I refuse to go past OS 10.6 and lose ANY of my apps.

 

After years of considering it, I still don't know which to choose. When my Panasonic TM900 goes kaput, I'll go insane reading then. I want one of these RED cellphones, I bet they make good video. I'm not even in a rush to upgrade to 4K, although it does look great, because my 2007 iMac would explode trying to crunch 4k footage. It would take me September to render a five minute movie with special effects.

 

Okay, this is old, sepia toned MiniDV footage. I had a beautiful Sony TRV900 that I bought with my first script moola! Boom. Check. Mail. Camera! Haha. Now this footage you will think is the most shakey amatuerism footage ever shot, but if you watch me get in the groove , I start start to get my groove and focusing on personalities and just stay on them like the Maisel brothers, and caught up in the fury managing to stay focused, panning with rocking singers (the Strokes cover band), catching solos, group action, constantly zooming and searching for details, knowing when to back out for relief in long shot. and all this shot off the cuff in one go in a CROWDED punk bar in Bangkok. I guess I shoot fast and loose, taking chances. I'm the king of close ups. The idea of setting up a camera on a tripod is an anathema to me. I want my video to feel organic and nuanced. And this is a good example of get a sense of kinetic motion from the camerawork. It's exhausting. You have to stay so focused. I filmed one other punk extravagance that people raved about, but I only had one VHS and lost it forever. That is also a good show, interesting show -- they're all Thai Punk Cover bands, Smashing Pumpkins, the Strokes (this young band rocks pretty cool. The lead singers got it. but NOBODY knows the words! Hahha) The last band of white kids were my friends at my newspaper and I think I got really lucky with that set. It just works. Anyway, if you set me out with a camera to shoot non-stop live single camera at Woodstock, with no plan in my, Mr. Pennebaker, this is what you would have got.|

 

I would only move to 4K for two reasons:

Shoot a wide shot and then be able to go in and crop and reframe down to 1080 afterwards.

Shoot in HDR, and have the latitude to compensate for bad lighting.

No way would I ever deliver anything in 4k. Seriously, there's no point because my stuff is never going to be shown on a 30-foot wide screen. Just going by resolution, 1080p is more than enough for display on a 60 inch screen.