Manchester Live Music Video Shoot

The kit I took with me including: Canon 5D, Canon 60D and Gopro Hero 3 Black

On the evening of Thursday the 27th of March I took my first trip up to Manchester; I was due to work with Tom Rout, a freelance videographer based in Manchester who specialises in "video marketing for musicians". Tom's website can be found here! 

The night was dedicated to doing live coverage of a band's gig and I was to assist in bringing a second angle; what Tom didn't expect was that I was going to kit up and bring three cameras to produce the video. When I arrived in Manchester I was met by Tom and we walked our way to the Gullivers pub and headed upstairs to start the set up. 

Still from the gopro footage

The inside of the venue

As you can see in the above photo the set up with the lighting was very red; however Tom explained that the band were wanting a "grungy look" in the video, which when translated in the videos came across really strongly which can be seen in the above still in the gopro footage. Our first job at the venue was to decide what the set up for each of the cameras was going to be; we decided the 5D would be on Tom's shoulder mount as we could utilise its full functions for the gig and I would use one of the 60Ds unmounted for my own video parts. The other 60D had a 10-24mm lens making it extremely wide angled, so therefore we set it up on the speakers behind the band as a stationary camera to capture the crowd. With the gopro we used a jaws flex mount and put it on the keyboard at the front, facing towards the lead singer.

5D on the shoulder mount

All the kit

Gopro set up side view

Gopro set up front view

60D gorilla tripod set up

The plan for filming was that Tom would stay near the front and mostly film straight long shots of the band, whereas I would move around the venue to capture both the band by also the crowd and everything else. At the start of the gig the band had a video projection and I had to stand at the back to record it (I had to stand on a crate to be able to see over everyone!) but from then I moved around the entire venue to record the atmosphere, including recording behind the sound technician and also through the crowd in-between heads of the crowd. Overall the night was good, the crowd was easy to get through and recording was actually good fun to go through. The video is now going through editing so at the moment there is no physical video but it should be up soon! 

My view from the back with the crowd

The crate I had to use!

View from behind the sound technician