During the pre-production for Four Wheel Drive’s Hammered Again music video they decided that it would be great to lead into the launch of the extravagant Hammered Again video with a straight up down and dirty performance video. This video would be for their song No Money Down, literally about having no money but having a great time regardless.
And so they called me with the idea to shoot a performance in their rehearsal space the next morning, of course I was up for it! I had a bunch of listens to the song and noticed that it has a really nice clear structure from verses and chorus’ that could play well with an edit that used different focal lengths in different parts of the song. And so I set off with a camera, tripod and a few lenses.
Setting up
The band wanted the room to look shitty and so they set up their kit accordingly while I rigged up the five lights we had available. I had to choose a place for the lights and keep them there because we had only a few hours in the room. The best option seemed to be to stick one either side of Will (drums), one next to Paddy (guitar) and the fourth next to Ben (lead guitar). The fifth light was some naff disco thing that I stuck behind the drums that actually added some nice movement to things. Lucky for me I found some kind of LED torch probably meant for a mechanic that I was able to hang from the ceiling right in Jamie’s (bass and vocals) face. Which not only lit him really nicely but also picked him out as it was the only daylight coloured lighting.
Action!
Once set, we ploughed through the song a bunch of times as I picked up all the shots I needed. I started with the widest (8mm fisheye) thinking that the band might still be warming up a little but you can’t see many details in a fisheye shot. Then I moved in for 24mm, then 18mm handheld of each member, then the 70mm shot of the teeth.
I did the edit later that day on my laptop and had it ready to go in just a few hours!
The band loved the rawness of it and it worked as a great lead up to the narrative video we shot a few weeks later (read about that video here) using no performance element. I particularly like the way the focal lengths fit with the structure of the song and help to show more or less of the room, almost making it a fifth character in the performance.
Kit Used:
Canon 550D
Sigma 8mm fisheye
Canon 18-55mm
Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8
Manfrotto 055xProB tripod
Home-made shoulder mount
Crappy stage lights
Fog machine
Tag: performance
behind the scenes, video
Making something beautiful in under 30 minutes
by info@dancoffey.co.uk • • 0 Comments
I was recently asked to film two performances and an interview with solo artist Natasha North for SubTV. The interview would be between just her and presenter Ivan Berry and the performances would be just her on her own on guitar or piano. The challenge was that I had to do all of this on my own, including audio, with one light and all within an hour.
We filmed the interview first and this served as a great way of loosening everyone up, Ivan is great at that. Moving onto the first performance, Natasha perched herself on the edge of her couch with an acoustic guitar. I stuck my light up on her right as she was leaning to her left so the light grazed across her face. I also had a horrible little LED panel in my bag that I rested on the back of the couch as a hair light. She gave a great performance over the two takes and I filmed in close so as to allow me to move the camera a little more. This video is embedded at the bottom of this post.
Thankfully we were able to run over by around 20 minutes and so we quickly switched to her beautiful upright piano for the second performance (embedded above). I’ve always found it a bit tricky filming people at an upright piano because they are essentially singing with their face up against a surface. On this occasion I wanted to be brave and make the viewer wait to see Natasha’s face. And so I set up my one light above and behind her and clamped a 5DmkIII to the light stand and opened it up to f/2.8 so that her hands on the keys were just out of focus.
The other angles were the fillers to give the audience something to work with and I found the light balanced quite nicely with the ambient light of the studio. Natasha gave two great performances and I handed the footage over to Dan Baxter who did a lovely edit including slow fades that really suite the song.
Here is the first song Natasha performed:
Kit used:
Canon 5DmkIII
Canon 550D
Canon 16-35mm f/2.8
Canon 24-70mm f/2.8
One LED panel