So a smokin startup Paramore tribute band, After Laughter needed a promo to launch their act and wanted me to help them out with some video services. We sat down and came up with a battle plan to what I call a hybrid promo package where it's cover music shot similar to an original music video and the audio is captured in the studio not in a live show.
Audio
First thing was to record their 5 songs in the studio and use that for playback when we shot the video. This way we completely remove all the dicey complexities of recording the audio in a live setting. Having total control of the audio gets me exactly what I want, removes any middleman and is so conveniently all under one control. We banged out the tracking work in around a week. Mastered the 5 tracks to one giant file so that I would not hose my video timeline sync if I went back to make additionally audio changes. Critically maintaining the start & stop times in the audio project timeline. This audio portion could get a full breakdown, but I'll just truncate it to this.
Concept
A performance shoot heavy presentation but with B roll elements of group walking, maybe some elevator, close ups and basic bts footage.
Shoot Location
There was a very cool downtown loft space rental that I always wanted to use, so I suggested it and the band liked it too so they booked it up. We had a tight 4 hour slot. Pretty high ceilings, wood flooring, spacious and some great loft window light. 5th floor with freight elevator so that was definitely handy to drag all the gear up. It was really nice having enough space to not worry about overshoot sightlines. The day was hot and the space was even hotter, it was brutal & we were in for a marathon.
Camera / Audio Technical
Canon R5c, R5Format - 4K DCI 4096x2160, 2.39:1 aspect ratio, (59.94fps, 29.97fs, 120fps), ALL-I 10-bit, S-LOG 3Rendered to 4K 30FPSTripodRonin RS3 Pro gimbal stabilized, handheldSigma Art 28mm f/1.4, Sigma Art 50mm f/1.4 lenses, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8Principal shoot & B-roll - 4 hoursAllen & Heath QU 24 channelStudio One DAW
Performance
Giving the lean amount of time we had to shoot, I pre-planned most of my moves to try not to get jacked up with time. You always try, but even then, things are adjusted on the fly. Main static tripod mounted camera shoot, x5 songs. Here I had the Canon R5C at 8k, 29.97 fps on a tripod. I knew this shot was going to have all kinds of backlight issues facing the huge windows, so I got my 2 big lights with diffusion fabric facing the windows ready to go and sure enough, one fixture is dead. Re-center the good one, with an 86" parabolic umbrella, adjust my ISO and move on. Nothing more I could do. Instead of the originally planned Sigma 28mm, I had to swap lenses to the wider Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 since I needed a little more width at about 22mm for this scene. We finished up with this and moved on to the individuals.
"....wicked working temperatures of the likes of a boat ride with Charon on the River Styx."
After a quick calculation, I realized there was no way to cover each musician for each of the 5 songs in time. So I opted for a single take of the frontman for each of the songs and went with wide, sweeping pans with the gimbal to try to include the other musicians. Given the circumstances, this worked well. To do a thorough shoot, it would have taken 2x the time we had. We had a small PA for audio playback that was a bit rough with some endless reverberation in the highly reflective room. Hard to get around that. Everyone did really well though with tracking sync, especially the drummer.
B Roll
All gimbal shots here. I went with the Canon R5 with a Sigma 28mm wide open at f/1.4. For some reason the R5C does not have eye tracking focus at 120FPS but R5 does so I went that route. I knew I was going for slomo throughout this sequence. A lot of fast moving, backward tracking movements with my stalwart assistant steering me via beltloop while holding a 24" Nanlite tube overhead for some eye catchlight. It's hilarious listening back to the original audio of me barking out commands like some 3rd Reich douche. Yikes.
The studio also had a solid white, painted background area that I wanted to use for closeups footage. This whole series was shot in a record breaking time since we were completely out of it at this point. We were moving fast and man, was it crazy hot! I had the R5C on a tripod here with the Sigma 50mm at f/2.0 I think and (1) 48" Nanlite overhead on a stand. This was the final shoot and then we were scrambling out the door to get cool in the °85 outside weather.
That's a Wrap
Overall this was an excellent shoot despite the short time allowance and wicked working temperatures of the likes of a boat ride with Charon on the River Styx. In one of the bts stills, it looks as though the guitar player is bartering his soul with the obstinate ac unit to just.. run.. cooler. All the musicians did such a fantastic job and soldiered through and got it done all while looking good. I'll get a 120 sec, 5 song promo and 1 full song video out of this project. Wrap it up, I'll take it.
