Jay Curlee
Forum Replies Created
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I think the PA feed is the best basic audio for this kind of shooting. I will find a way to fill it out with ambient mics. I think a combo of a stage mic and mic at the PA board would probably be the best strategy.
Kinky Friedman was very helpful to my project and has given me much pleasure with his books and music. He gave me two of my biggest laugh lines in my film. Rocking the Boat was a money loser, but the friends I made, made it all worth it. I got to make a feature, do film festivals, and learn lots of lessons.
My bucket list was well served.
Best,
Jay
Jay Curlee
JC Communications
Makers of Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation and Journey
http://www.rockingtheboatmovie.com -
You are right of course that there is no point to mix in distorted ambient audio. I did mix some ambience in my one camera examples. It is nice to have a little room sound mixed in. The front of house (PA) guys and monitor guys are outstanding on this music cruise, but as Craig points out, they mix it pretty dry. I might just put an ambient mic by the PA board. The crowd sounds will be a little hot but it will give a more natural feel.
Unfortunately the amount of running around I do, both in the crowd, and on or around stage, has meant that my monopod as glide cam/jib arm is the only practical way to go. A shoulder mount is too limiting in the tight spaces I work. Another factor is that the deck is pitching much of the time.
Having the locked off sony HDR-11 as a wide cover will be enormously helpful. That is one hell of a little camera.
I am very curious about how F1.8 and 3db gain or less will look (on the night stuff). I can’t even tell what my camera settings were last year because that metadata is gone. It looks like I had at least 9b gain.
Vortex Media’s DVD and Field Manual are money well spent. I know my video will be better this year.
Best, Jay
Jay Curlee
JC Communications
Makers of Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation and Journey
http://www.rockingtheboatmovie.com -
To be clear, I only used auto iris and focus on my first time out with the EX-1 camera, which was last January. The movie was shot back in 2006 with 4, Z-1s and a 900 which were set up by my DP. It still took a lot of color correction to get it ready for film festivals.
I never worried about hiding or avoiding cameramen on the movie shoot. This particular song missed cameramen probably because my editor liked the shots you see better.
I will still probably go with auto focus on the cruise again this year, unless working with less gain makes that impossible. Unfortunately, last year I only had an 8gb and 16gb card. I had to run back to my room and import them into a final cut project (rewrap them in QT), format the card and start shooting again. I didnt’ know about Clip Browser yet (or the BPAV file structure). This means I can’t even see what I was doing with the camera because all that info is gone. My camera’s firmware would not except SDHC cards at that time. Now I have 12, 16G cards.
I also now have a year with the camera under my belt. I will probably try to manually iris when I can but this music cruise is a real run and gun environment and it is like shooting in a (albeit friendly) riot.
I still wonder what our community does about ambient sound when they are shooting in extremely loud environments.
Best,
JC
Jay Curlee
JC Communications
Makers of Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation and Journey
http://www.rockingtheboatmovie.com -
Sorry for the particularly shaky examples. For this stuff, I have taken the approach that I was shooting b-roll because there is no good spot to set up a tripod at this venue and still capture the musician perspective. These clips I shared are really just for the enjoyment of cruisers and musicians (and give an example of the lighting conditions). If I “do” anything with the footage it will be to use select short clips as b-roll for interviews. These camera “positions” are literally on the front left and right corners of the relatively small stage. I am shooting with a monopod being used as a poor man’s glidecam and/or human crane. Sometimes I am actually hanging from the canopy supports with one hand. This year I am going to lock off an HDR-11 on a wide shot with a Magic Arm clamped to the canopy support, and run around with the EX-1. That way I’ll spare the viewer the shakiest stuff.
I obviously do have a decent front of house feed to the Samson H4, but I wanted to have some ambient sound to mix in. The on board mic does not seem to have attenuation that can stand up to the volume generated on stage. It distorts no matter how low the input is set. I think that I may try a fixed mounted shotgun on the stage and wireless that back to the camera. Whatever I do must be fairly simple because I am a one man band and I shoot parts of 30+ shows in 7 days. I do this as a labor of love. When we shot on the cruise for my music doc, we had 5 cameras, 24 tracks, and a sound man. We had 4 Z-1Us and an HDCAM 900. Here is an example: https://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=63691149
Thanks,
Jay
Jay Curlee
JC Communications
Makers of Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation and Journey
http://www.rockingtheboatmovie.com -
I have the identical system running on an 8-core 2.8ghz Power Mac. (10.5.8 and 6.0.6)
I too have experienced the missing multiclip angles just recently. The presence of color correcting filters seems to affect this, but turning off the filters doesn’t bring the angles back. They stay black. The time code numbers are still there.
This is a brand new problem as far as I am concerned. The latest updates are my top suspects.
Best, Jay
Jay Curlee
JC Communications
Makers of Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation and Journey
http://www.rockingtheboatmovie.com -
I am with Ron on this one. Beautifully shot and lit.
This is to music what the SI Swimsuit Edition is to sports.
Music video was and is good for the production business. I don’t think it had a positive effect on music or musicians.
This is not the forum to get into that, though.
Beautiful job, Michael. I’d rather hear Steve Earl, though.
Jay
Jay Curlee
JC Communications
Makers of Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation and Journey
http://www.rockingtheboatmovie.com -
Thanks Mike. Have you tested this or know someone who has one?
Best,
Jay
Jay Curlee
JC Communications
Makers of Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation and Journey
http://www.rockingtheboatmovie.com -
I think it was Noah who mentioned a hard drive that had slots for flash cards. The item allow stand alone offloading of files.
Noah? Anyone?
Best,
Jay
Jay Curlee
JC Communications
Makers of Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation and Journey
http://www.rockingtheboatmovie.com -
Hey Craig, How do I transfer an 11GB BPAV folder to DVDs?
Thanks,
Jay
Jay Curlee
JC Communications
Makers of Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation and Journey
http://www.rockingtheboatmovie.com -
The postscript to my file problems is that the troubled files had hits whereby they would cut to black for a second or more and then rebuild. I cut out the hits and exported the files to QT movies from FCP. This saved most of the footage.
Whether these hits were camera hits or drive hits is the $64K question. FWIW, all the hits happened on files saved to a particular drive on a particular data dump. That would be a clue.
Thanks for the help, guys.
Jay
Jay Curlee
JC Communications
Makers of Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation and Journey
http://www.rockingtheboatmovie.com