Live Event Videography
It’s great being a creative, every so often the phone rings with a project where you think to yourself, ‘Ooh yeah! and you forget that you are being paid to create this piece of work, because really, you want to be there!
A very talented musician by the name of Gabriella Jones asked us to cover one of her events and edit it down into a music video. I had been wanting to do some event videography for a while, so I jumped at the chance to take on the shoot.
It’s great thing having a few tools at your disposal is that you can grab some kit and go out and shoot.
Gabrella simly wanted her performance covered, but we knew we could do better for her. We filmed her journey from the beginning, showing her audiences, what kind of challenges as an artist she had to go through and how much dedication it takes for her just to be ‘known’ (this is an artist who’s played some of the UK’s biggest festivals, including Isle of Wight’).
So what was the plan? Well, a standard event videography set-up, FS7 (we’re shooting 4k now, and it looks stunning!) LED light on top of my camera, standard Rode shotgun mic and boom. I knew the camera did well in low-light and it’s something I’m very familiar with, so it just made sense to use it – although what of the gig? How can we capture audio? The mic on top does well for speech in less noisy environments, but how was it possible to capture a real nice clean audio of her sound? You contact the sound engineer and ask if they can output a mix-down of the live sound through the desk – he happily supplied us with it! We took down a small XLR audio recorder (Tascam Dr60-D) and he did exactly what he said he could – and gave us a live mix into my sound recorder, all recorded in .WAV and all appropriately mixed. Syncing the material never felt so satisfying. Other than when Gabby pulled her face away from the mic, everything sounds perfect.
The shoot went really well. When we scoped the venue, that’s when I suggested the change of theme in the video, just because you can get a bit more creative with it and because I know that it’s great content for Gabriella. I pitched the idea to her and it was an instant ‘go for it’ – it’s nice to have an artist that can go with the flow and won’t get fidgety about my personal creative process. She wanted one of those songs recorded throughout, so I said ‘lets pick this, i’ll stay on you for that and then i’ll grab miscellaneous shots so we can cut between so we have one full track for you that we can make a lot more interesting’. – Again, she was more than happy with this – and we can work in some great imagery by arranging another shoot, and put a bit more impact & narrative in there.
Live events are one of our favourite things to shoot. Personally, I love how they can connect people, and have it be used as a way of extending the experience to those who were not there on the night.
Have a look at the final video below and check out Gabriella’s music on her Facebook page!
