I had the pleasure of producing a live performance promo for New Jersey based rock band REVERSE ORDER last month at the Sands Resort in Pennsylvania. These guys have toured the world and were semi-finalists on America’s Got Talent. Since this band is independent, maximizing their budget was my main concern. This project is a perfect example of my “One Man Band” production workflow..bad pun at no extra charge.
Here is the link to the full
promo on my YouTube Channel (REVERSE ORDER Promo). The
details of my workflow are below.
PRE-PRODUCTION:
Working alone at a concert
is a daunting task, but it doesn’t mean that the promo should be limited to
boring, static camera angles.
After all this is Rock “N” Roll so everything about it should be
heart-pumping. The key is to
define the goal of the promo with the band before the shoot. In REVERSE ORDER’s case, they wanted to
present highlights of several songs throughout the night. We mutually agreed to focus on 6
songs. The full night included
roughly 30 songs. This would help
me determine my shooting strategy.
Truthfully, the only mistake on my part during pre-production was making
sure that the selected songs were not the first songs played that evening. The first song or two should be used to
check audio recording levels and camera exposure. It’s also helpful for the
band and I to have a couple of songs to warm up. In addition, the crowd doesn’t usually gather until the
second set and you definitely need crowd shots in a live band promo.
VIDEO PRODUCTION:
My video equipment list was
very lean and mean. I brought my
Canon-70D DLSR and a Manfroto Monopod. Each
time one of the six band-designated songs was being played, I shot conservative
hand-held coverage.
I started on a wide shot, moved in for close-ups of the lead singer, and
panned over to capture the lead guitarist and drummer during solos. Then at the end of the song it was back
out to a wide shot. Simple
enough. The real trick was that I
shot every single song that night…even ones not designated by the band. This was my opportunity to shoot “cover
shots”. The cover shots included close-ups of
band members and their instruments, extreme wide shots showing the crowd, shots
on stage behind the band, and crowd group shots without the band. This is where my monopod came in handy, allowing me to shoot high-angle shots by extending
it fully and holding it as high as I could.
(A High-Angle "Cover Shot" using the Monopod)
(A "Cover Shot" of Cruise Russo not playing the drums to one of the six key songs)
The cover shots were added in the edit room to make the shoot look like there were multiple cameras
being used. It was also the key to
producing a dynamic promo with pacing that matched the tempo of the songs and the band’s
infectious energy...on a very cost-effective budget!
AUDIO PRODUCTION:
Audio is by far the most
challenging aspect of shooting a live event alone. It’s almost completely out of my control and I never know
what I’m up against until the moment I arrive at the venue. A pre-concert sound check was not
possible since the club was situated in the middle of the casino. I brought my Zoom H1 Digital Audio
Recorder.
This is the best $100 I’ve
ever spent on production gear…period!
My first thought was to connect it to the house audio board to record a
clean mix. The house audio operators were very cooperative, but could only feed
me a “line” signal via XLR outputs.
Line signals are too strong for the Zoom’s mic input. I have since solved that problem. I will blog about it soon. The venue that night was in the middle
of a loud casino with slot machine bells going off non-stop! It was a challenging environment to say
the least. I made a quick decision
to place the Zoom H1 in front of one the band’s downstage audio monitors and
let the internal stereo microphones do their job. This would record a decent representation of the overall audio
mix. If it was good enough for the
band, it would be good enough for the promo. I also recorded the sound with the internal microphone of my
DSLR. Combining these two sources in
editing provided a reasonably good live recording of the gig. Setting the band’s expectations where
audio is concerned is definitely important. Even when I do connect directly to
someone’s audio board, it doesn’t guarantee success. The operators are mixing for the live room, not our video. You always need alternate audio sources
as a back-up!
POST-PRODUCTION:
Since this was a highlight
promo. I decided to use the chorus
from each song in the final edit.
As most of you know, the chorus is the “hook” of the song that everyone
instantly recognizes. Fortunately, there is
always more than one chorus in every rock song and, for the most part, they are
identical in both lyric and music structure. That enabled me to use the best shots from all of the
choruses of a single song...to edit together one killer chorus from each of the six
songs the band was interested in.
In short, it was like having three separate takes of each song’s chorus.
LESSONS LEARNED:
There’s an old saying that
goes something like this, “television production is not about what goes right,
it’s about what goes wrong and how you deal with it.” When you’re working alone, “run & gun” style as I often do,
planning is vital. However, all of
the planning in the world won’t completely remove the risk of failure. You must also rely on your experience
and instincts to adjust to changes on the spot. If you have any suggestions on how I could improve this
workflow, your comments would be greatly appreciated. If you use this workflow on a production, please let me
know how you did.
ROCK ON EVERYONE!
ROCK ON EVERYONE!
