This post is concerning Dominic Cheli’s performance which is here
It turns out that making progress doesn’t mean you’re done 🙂 I have made a lot of progress since Kaden came for his visit but I am still not there.
I should say that hauling gear on a flight isn’t super fun. It is heavy, awkward and I am generally pushing the limits of how much folks can take on flights. I have a big bag that I have checked for years (thanks Costco!) which has clothes and this time had a (I think) 24 inch monitor as well. This bag is the one that really pushes the fifty pound weight limit. I was flying Southwest and could check four bags, so I also checked a bag with the switch and a bunch of cables, a thing (which I didn’t end up using) for getting an over-piano shot, a Pelican case with some random supporting things. On the way back I switched the Pelican case for a bag of cables and carried on the Pelican. It is also stressful because there are so many single points of failure and if I forget any of them then the recording is at risk. Some of these include things my headphones or the headphone cord to a lightning cable to send the feed to my laptop to, or power cables or you know, my laptop 🙂
I got everything there and only setup six of the eight cameras. I tried for a few minutes to get a shot of the piano keys but bailed because it just wasn’t coming together and I didn’t want to put everything else at risk. I also brought a 24″ Rhino Camera track and didn’t set it up. Just too much to do and I was kind of feeling some diminishing returns on shots, though I would really like to get a track shot in.
Here are some things that went well
- Dominic played very well and I think he was excited to be there. He came with over an hour of music that was varied and fit together well. Dominic being a rather phenomenal pianist helps for sure. I am not sure how much you can feel it on the recordings, but I think there were some pretty magic moments throughout and I thought the Brahms Op. 118 was especially magic.
- In the end I liked all but one of the shots. I made some subtle adjustments throughout our session and liked what I ended up with. The only shot I really didn’t like was the over-the-shoulder shot because I think the piano keys look very yellow. The other shot I wasn’t thrilled with was the wider shot where you can’t see the keys.
- I think the edits are pretty good, though of course not perfect. This is a different way to shoot. Dominic commented on how the kind of whole take nature meant that things were not going to be perfect and yeah, the fact that I am editing on the fly means the edits aren’t going to be perfect either. When I have edited musical performances in the past, I will record several cameras and do all the editing in post. I will often go frame-by-frame to edit to precise frames and moments. Not so here.
- My favorite part is that before I fell asleep for the night I had the edits done, rendering kicked off and uploads happening to YouTube. Before lunch the next day, everything had been uploaded. So though the edits were not perfect, I liked that they were done and uploaded within twenty-four hours as opposed to (I hate say) like twenty-four months.
What deserves a second look
- I hate to say it, because I thought I had solved this problem, but the sync was off 🙁 This meant I didn’t stream and had to make that adjustment in post. I am hoping to fix things and then keep them fixed and not have to re-solve things repeatedly.
- When I was trying to fix the sync I inadvertently added an effect that I think messed up the sound in several spots. This is especially frustrating because I had not been able to record the sound as it passed through the Zoom F8. If I had been able to I could have just used that sound in post. After Dominic had left, I found the F8 had new firmware that allowed the recording to happen. I had wanted this for a couple previous shoots and I guess I should have checked before . My bad 🙁
- Didn’t have the over-piano shot. This is a pretty killer shot, especially for complex finger work. I am going to research how I might better get this shot because it can take literally up to an hour to get it exact.
- No track shot 🙁 I hauled the darn thing from Utah to NYC and didn’t even pull it out of the bag. Some movement would be nice in a shot or two. I have another, smaller, maybe simpler track from Kickstarter that is scheduled to show up next month. Guess we’ll see if that helps.
- I didn’t think of it till the end, but I wish I had a nice wide shot of the whole shoot, where you could see pretty well all the cameras, the piano, me editing, etc. Kind of a shot to tear down the fourth wall. I think I’d just include it zero or one times per piece, but I think it would have been cool. I was also thinking this could have been the track shot.
- I had four of the six cameras plugged in and of course one died and of course it died when it was the program shot. Darn. I should probably pick up more power for such occasions but I had plenty of batteries and could have pretty easily kept an eye on battery level. Plugging in is the secret though I think.
- My GH5 can record 4k locally and send 2k through HDMI. Pretty cool, actually. I should have recorded on the GH5 the whole time to have a fallback shot which I could have applied in post. Without it, I have a few seconds of blackness during the Liszt / Mozart and what looks to be a buffering problem in that piece as well. A Sony or two can do the 4k local / 2k HDMI dance as well, but they all seem to overheat 🙁
- All the transitions are sharp, which is kind of a bummer. I wish I would have experimented with some cross dissolves or maybe other effects which my board can handle.
- I wish things sounded more like a studio recording. I am not sure how to make progress on this. I bought some quite nice mics and they do a fine job, but yeah, it’s not quite some DG classical recording. Wonder how I can get there when I will likely shoot in some random spots with random pianos.
- I don’t know if it is an filter that I inadvertently added or something strange that was going on, but there is a strange effect on portions of the audio. Of all the issues, I think this one is by far the worst.
- Next time I think I should just record the pianist talking about the pieces as they sit at the piano. I could just hook up a wireless mic and record that way. I have been pondering the idea of having two good minutes where the pianist has prepared up to two minutes of interesting material about what they’re going to perform.
- Wish I had shot more footage from around the city. I think folks might like real world footage mixed in with the live performance footage.
I am excited to try again sometime. There are a few musicians in NYC that I am hoping to return and record. If all goes well, I would stay and record at the same place, we’d record over a few days and wow won’t it be great to iterate and improve on the same trip without having to wait a few months 🙂 It is kind of like when I used to teach three sections of college algebra each semester. I got pretty dang good by the end of that third section 🙂
I also just want to say that I am pretty thrilled to have travelled to NYC and recorded a great, willing artist for EMR. Here’s hoping that I can continue to improve and continue to get great folks to perform!
Currently I am flying back home and read this quote, which I think is great
“Along with recording European jazz artists in his studio, Brunner-Schwer had made a series of well-regarded live recordings in his living room with pianist Oscar Peterson.”
Nothing like recording music in someone’s living room.
Gear
- six cameras
- Panasonic GH5 – 15mm F1.7 – wide shot where you can see Dominic and the whole keyboard
- Sony A6000 – Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 via MC11 converter – wide shot of the inside of the piano and Dominic
- Sony A6000 – 50mm F1.8 – tighter shot of Dominic’s face (sister shot of the above, where the two cameras share a tripod)
- Sony A6300 – Rokinon 24mm T1.5 – shot kind of over Dominic’s right shoulder
- Sony A7 III – 50mm F1.8 – shot of the keys at pretty much key level
- Panasonic G7 – 25mm F1.7 – kind of wide shot of Dominic and the piano, but you can’t see the keys
- two Audix SCX25A-PS
- audio capture through a Zoom F8
- Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio Pro HD Live Production Switcher