Green Day on Red

[NateWeaver]

Just found out 10 minutes ago the 55 minute cutdown of the concert is airing on HDNET next couple days. Next one at 12:00AM tonight/Monday 31st.

Think it's 9pm tomorrow night the 31st as well.

Compression looks hideous, but color work remains unscathed.

 

[sbcooler]

Very cool Nate. A couple of questions for you if you don't mind. I've only shot smaller bands myself but I'm curious to how it works with the giant bands like a U2 or Green Day for that matter?

1- Would you ever hire/intern an enthusiast that has some experience and his own great equipment but no professional experience? I don't need the money.
2- Does an individual camera man get to keep or copy his own footage so he can review it and learn from it? Would a camera man be able to come to the edit and watch the process?
3- When you edit a show like this who does the sound mix? And do you edit to a straight mix for video editing only (with whatever was mixed at the venue) and then lay the sound mix in later after the sound people do the editing and tweeking?
4- Did you use any cranes for the Green Day shoot?
5- My biggest question..for a rock show with flashing lights of all different colors how does one shoot in manual when everything is changing so fast? What adjustments, outside of framing and focus, are the camera men making during a show like this? Are they all using zoom lenses and are any just using prime lenses?

Thanks for answering my novice questions...would love to volunteer for any show really just to get experience shooting in what I can only imagine to be a challenging situation. Is it challenging for the pro shooter? And do you shoot continuous or stop and start?

Thx-

 

[NateWeaver]

1- Would you ever hire/intern an enthusiast that has some experience and his own great equipment but no professional experience? I don't need the money.

Generally no, but late in the prepro process on Green Day I actually posted here on RU looking for 2 student-types with gear to shoot crowd footage. Interestingly, I did not get any responses except from some people I already knew, and that's what wound up happening.

2- Does an individual camera man get to keep or copy his own footage so he can review it and learn from it? Would a camera man be able to come to the edit and watch the process?

No, and no. Maybe for a smaller concert somebody would be able to keep their footage, but bands and labels do not want raw footage in the wild. On the edit, what you're asking is just more of a pain than anything else, so nobody is going to go out of their way to get you in on the process.

3- When you edit a show like this who does the sound mix? And do you edit to a straight mix for video editing only (with whatever was mixed at the venue) and then lay the sound mix in later after the sound people do the editing and tweeking?

In this case, we hired a mobile recording truck called LeMobile. They take a split of all 48 or whatever soundboard inputs from stage, run them out the backdoor of the venue, and record to redundant 48-track ProTools rigs. They also do a 2-track mixdown to CD recorder as the show happens so somebody can walk at the end of the night with a quick mix. That's what I edited with.

4- Did you use any cranes for the Green Day shoot?

Yes, 21ft Jimmy Jib. We had budgeted for a Technocrane, but during the tech scout we found that we physically couldn't get the Techno in through the theatre doors. Big bummer.

5- My biggest question..for a rock show with flashing lights of all different colors how does one shoot in manual when everything is changing so fast? What adjustments, outside of framing and focus, are the camera men making during a show like this? Are they all using zoom lenses and are any just using prime lenses?

Two things: 1, you try to use cameras that are good at capturing wide brightness ranges ("latitude"), which the Red is good at. 2, You talk to the concert lighting designer to have him keep wide brightness ranges in check. On this one, this guy had done a LARGE amount of TV, so he knew the drill.

On Green Day, all cameras had zoom lenses, which means widest aperture was 2.8. All cameras were wide open at 2.8, and set to 640ASA for monitoring. As it turns out, 640ASA was about perfect.

Thanks for answering my novice questions...would love to volunteer for any show really just to get experience shooting in what I can only imagine to be a challenging situation. Is it challenging for the pro shooter? And do you shoot continuous or stop and start?

Concerts are always a challenge, but usually because of the politics involved in getting cameras where you want them...once you get a few concerts under your belt you realize that exposure is not as big as a problem as you might think, as long as there's enough light.

And lastly, when you shoot a concert, the golden rule is DON'T STOP ROLLING. An editor is going to need to sync what you shoot, if you start rolling at the beginning and don't stop, then he only needs to sync that camera once. If you get hired to shoot a show and you hand them a tape with 60 separate clips on it when they were expecting you to roll the entire show, they will literally come to your doorstep a week later and shoot you where you stand!

 

[NateWeaver]

Can't wait, looking forward to a link.

Don't hold your breath. Comcast had an exclusive on this last May, and they had it on their website then. Since, it's really been nowhere cept for crappy rips on Youtube.

I have posted one song on my Vimeo acct, just search for my name.

 

[Chris Pickle]

Took my son to see Green Day last summer. We had a blast. They put on an incredible concert and the band has been around so long that both of us dig them. My son had a smile for a week.

 

[sbcooler]

Nate, thanks for answering all my questions. Very interesting. I'll save the post for sure. Supposing I am rich....

1- Could I pay the production company enough money to sit in the back quietly and watch the edit?
2- Could I sign an agreement that would allow me to keep a copy of my footage and or other angles (they could sue me for millions if I don't adhere to the contract)?
3- On shoots like Green Day, who actually OWNS the footage? Is it GREEN DAY or the PRODUCTION COMPANY? Does the production company keep a copy of of all shot footage?
4- When editing this will you ever get a copy of the full edited audio to drop into your edit timeline? Then you could watch the edited version uncompressed with nearly perfect audio quality.
5- Lastly would a group like Green Day or more likely U2 allow me to come with 3-4-5 or even 10 camera guys with RED's and shoot a show. Would they share the soundboard audio with me and let me edit something for them keeping everything confidential...or do you think they'd be too worried about it getting out? Isn't some kind of confidentiality agreement or binding agreement good enough to satisfy the trust issues? Or some kind of bond or money? Or is this asking way too much?

Thanks again for your input and experience...at some point next year, I'd love to volunteer with my new Scarlet...when I get it!

 

[Peter Matthes]

Supposing I am rich....

1- Could I pay the production company enough money to sit in the back quietly and watch the edit?

If you were rich, you could hire Green Day to play your birthday party.

 

[NateWeaver]

1- Could I pay the production company enough money to sit in the back quietly and watch the edit?

Not any real production company I know.

2- Could I sign an agreement that would allow me to keep a copy of my footage and or other angles (they could sue me for millions if I don't adhere to the contract)?

Again, no. Nobody would do that, nor go through the trouble.

3- On shoots like Green Day, who actually OWNS the footage? Is it GREEN DAY or the PRODUCTION COMPANY? Does the production company keep a copy of of all shot footage?

In this case, Warner Bros. Records paid for the production, which then aired on Comcast initially. It's a big commercial, in preparation for release of the then-new record. Generally the prod co gets to retain a copy for their own reel.

4- When editing this will you ever get a copy of the full edited audio to drop into your edit timeline? Then you could watch the edited version uncompressed with nearly perfect audio quality.

Of course I do. You get fully mixed audio to sync before it gets laid off to tape.

5- Lastly would a group like Green Day or more likely U2 allow me to come with 3-4-5 or even 10 camera guys with RED's and shoot a show. Would they share the soundboard audio with me and let me edit something for them keeping everything confidential...or do you think they'd be too worried about it getting out? Isn't some kind of confidentiality agreement or binding agreement good enough to satisfy the trust issues? Or some kind of bond or money? Or is this asking way too much?

Frankly, you'd never even get them to return your call, assuming you even got the number of the right person.

The trust issues are this: Are you going to make them look good? If you do not have a track record that you can SHOW, with similar stature bands, nobody is going to take a chance on you. Period. They don't care if they don't have to pay a dime, they've got money and that's never the issue.

Honestly, all your questions on this post revolve around "Can I buy my way into directing/shooting music video/concerts?", and the answer is no. You have to build a reel and trust, slowly, bit by bit with first no-name bands and work your way up from there. I didn't hire one single camera operator without first looking at their reel, and holding a phone interview. Half of them were good friends I've been shooting concerts with for 7+ years.

If you want to do this for a living, my suggestion would be to get a 5D, find 4 other people with 5Ds, and go find some bands big enough to have a following but not big enough to have $12K-$200K behind them to shoot a concert. Find a recording engineer to record audio. Convince them all you are good enough to get them to work for free for a show or two. Then get it edited. Show it to bigger bands. Build from there.

 

[sbcooler]

Thanks for all your answers. I've done smaller groups (Colbie Caillat) with HDV cams and a couple of others...nothing spectacular, but the edited versions do look pretty good considering the equipment, lighting, etc..also had an audio engineer for 1 of these shoots with about 16 tracks of uncompressed audio....the others I had soundboard recordings...but frankly I like mixing the soundboard and audience recording to get the best mix of crowd/music in the right spots.

I've spoken to a couple of people about getting a VIDEO PASS to film/video U2 and some lower level people said to write something up and they could possibly do it! Not sure what if anything that means. I wonder if I got a few of these (for a big group) if I'd get what I was after? A multi-cam shoot with good cams (Scarlets) I suppose I could also "meet" pro production people and get to know these people until they trust me enough to bring me out on a shoot and help out.

You were correct that I was wondering if I could short track the whole process by buying my way in in a nice way and being responsible/easy to work with and having excellent equipment. I'd love to work on and keep the final edited uncompressed production of a big band like a U2 or Coldplay. I could see how TRUST is the biggest issue and that would take time and experience to build up...perhaps in time. I still keep thinking (like a lawyer) if I signed some agreement, they could sue me for everything if I violated it...and I of course never would. I suppose I'm better off getting the production company to trust me if possible to get that copy.

I'm not really worried about making money doing this...more for the enjoyment/hobby and fun of it all...this is the primary reason I feel I'd be really good on these shoots because I do it for the fun, challenge and thrill of capturing a live show...plus I've shot a bunch of others/edited and been a 1 and 2 man production company with 4 or 5 cams on some smaller shoots...amazing what you can do with limited help when setting up before hand and reacting quickly in the moment.

I for sure want to pro up my game and with a Scarlet and some 1st hand lessons and practice plus with my current skills I hope to get involved at some point with some bigger band that I enjoy and help make something cool...we'll see I suppose.

Thx again for your time with me here-

 

[N_Villers]

Just a cursory but funny story. When I was in college at the CIA in Cleveland I came home one night to find a bunch of grungy looking guys hanging out in my apartment smoking from a giant bong and the whole place a wreck. I wasn't in the best of moods and as my crazy roommate at the time wasn't around I asked them to leave. Only later when she got home did I learn that they were the band greenday and were to play at the colosseum the next night. Needless to say my roommate wasn't so happy with me.

LOL