Creative ideas for multicam concert?

[Charley King]

Without seeing the footage I have no suggestions. I have faked shots in concerts when I didn’t have the shot of something at the time it really happened, but not sure what you have makes it hard to make suggestions.
Sorry
Charlie

ProductionKing Video Services
Las Vegas, Nevada
Charlie@proking.net

[Mark Suszko]

Is the actual singing any good? Sometimes, less is more, and if the performance is really good, you may not NEED to jazz it up with more effects.

That said, you could try tinting with tritone effects and layering the tinted and non-treated versions with overlaps and PIP effects. Another trick would be to go find some royalty-free b-roll footage that has something to do with the subject of the song and intercut with that. But that will cost time and cash.

[Mark Suszko]

P.S. if you have any influence at all in the shooting, get the cameras and director to tape all the rehearsals from alternate angles to what the final shoot will use, then you have a lot of extra cut-away or alternate take stuff to inter-cut with if you need it. You also can deliberately mix it in and make the final product look as if you had twice as many live cameras.

Usually, you can get cameras into shot locations during rehearsals that could never happen for the real actual shoot. Close-ups into the musicians’ faces from low angles, or real detail shots of various instruments during solos… almost anything.

I once shot a girls’ ballet recital this way, making two cameras look like four, and getting shots that would normally block too much of the audience front row. During the actual show, stagefright suddenly made one solist completely blank on her solo dance part, she vamped for a bit and the piece went on. She had nailed it in the more relaxed conditions of the rehearsal, and the timing was such that the swap was a drag and drop replacement (in a cuts-only linear editing era, it was an insert edit). Made me a super hero with the girl and her mom, who was one of the people paying for the project.

Tape is cheap except when it’s blank after the shoot, so burn thru it and shoot everything, because you never know what little piece can save you later.

[Sofi Marshall]

Thanks for the shooting tips, unfortunately I wasn’t involved in this one, but next time I’ll definitely try to get into the rehearsals. The tint and PIP effects are a great simple idea! I’ll give that a try and see how it goes. Thanks!

[Mark Suszko]

You’re welcome. I suggest if the music fits, go for a bluesey tritone blue, use for example, the colors in the background of this Panasonic switcher ad here on the COW web page we’re reading, and don’t worry if the contrast gets “crushy” while in the blue mode. Then make this tritone layer like a vertical racing stripe down one third of the screen, the other 2/3 all normal. See if that looks cool or not, depends a lot on the shot composition/proportions and how simple the frame looks. Too much detail going on in the shot takes away from the effect.

You can also add some atmosphere by duplicating the video layer, adding a lot of gaussian blur, and mixing between the layers thru opacity change and blend/compositing mode set to “multiply”.

[Andrew Commiskey]

I feel for you, in this situation I would forget Sync and just find good shots (musicians, CU, crowd whatever) and fake sync or take a measure from the end and find a similar one near the start and build from there. It’s a pain, but it can break things up. You can also set up boxes with different shots of the same subject (simi cubist approach) like 24 did in the 1st season. and don’t forget the biggest rule for bad footage “everyone looks cool in slo-mo” : 0 )

Chaos is the beginning of everything.

[Sofi Marshall]

Faking sync is another good idea… thanks for the input!