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How are close ups of singers usually done?
Hi, my nam is Thomas and i’m a VJ. A while ago the agency i’m with decided it was a good idea to offer customers kiss cam. This means i will be walking around with my camera and with a long sdi cable i’m connected directly to the VJ’s laptop so he can mix me into his visuals every now and then. Last time the customer wanted some shots of the singer as well. Before it even got started i already noticed that filming on stage wasn’t going to work. One reason was that there was hardly any space in front of the singer and i didn’t think it would be a good idea to be standing in front of them all the time. So i decided to only film from in front of the stage which resulted in very unstable close ups because of the distance and the handheld filming. So from that moment i only did medium shots of the artists. Client wasn’t happy, but i felt like seen the situation it was the most professional thing to do. My question is, how is this done normally? Am i right when i say to the agency that they shouldn’t promise clients close ups of singers when i’m filming this way?
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5 Replies
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They are done on tripods, or by getting on-stage or next to the stage. Also, get a gimbal rig for your camera, you’ll get more steady shots. When I was production manager in television, we’d do weekly concerts at a local venue and use a couple of good PTZ cameras that can zoom a good distance, and remote control them with a video switcher (ATEM Mini Pro ISO).
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Thanks, much appreciated!
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Tripods from a distance, right? Like from the Front of house?
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Hey Thomas,
What Ben says: If on tripod, you may need a bigger lens (Zoom), which in turn will need a bigger camera.
Just from the boring health and safety point of view: I am not sure that you should be running around with anything like a “long sdi cable” unless you have an assistant to handle cable, and is in an area where the public/other crew, cannot enter. Just in case your client pushes you to hard.
Also, you can not be in two places at the same time.
Depending on signals (or wifi), if it is just a “kiss cam”, you could put an iPhone or similar on the stage, and have it send a “live” video signal to the DJ.
However, if you want the singer to be in lip-sync, then you are into the realm of scaling your production, where you could use small cameras like a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema camera or similar.
There are smaller pro-sumer cameras that might do it for you. But depending on the environment and how easy they are to get off their mount, you may need operator/security on each camera.Atb
Mads -
thanks!
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