I hadn't really thought about shooting colored stage lights before. I wasn't sure what to do so I left it in auto white balance which in retrospect was a mistake. I would have been further ahead to do a fixed 3200 kelvin or something.

Audio was in camera. I used an aux send from this little Bose mixer I had which let me use the preamps and compressors from the mixer to tame the levels a bit. Mostly what you are seeing is the Olympus 45mm f1.8 wide open. The only shot I used the 2.8 zoom on was the initial and ending wide shot.

Just browsing some other forums and yeah, I should have preset the white balance for tungsten at around 3200 kelvin at least. That way I would be looking at relatively easy color correction instead of the large corrections that it looks like I need and may not have enough color depth to do.

Laurence, here's what we do.
Run the light board full up on all channels. WB on the onstage projection screen, lock and shoot the show. Stock 3200K would work, but may come out a bit warm in my my experience, what with filters, "some" halogens, and etc.
3400K+ may be better if you have that degree of control over your WB preset.

P.S. I know you're not her vocal coach, but if she wouldn't jut her lower jaw, it would relax the hyoid and take a little edge off her tone.

With the GH3 I can dial in exact white balance numbers. Cheating it a bit to 3400 kelvin sounds like a good idea. No role as a vocal coach here.

I've uploaded a better version. Still blown out in spots but the color is better. At least now I know how to do it properly.

Laurence some nice angles and composition on some shots, in my opinion the least attractive shot was the wide angle which you opened with. So you have a wide angle 9 sec uncomfortable feel at the get go. next time get some takes or cutaways from the backing track session and open with that.

Thanks Rory. That is my least favorite shot too. I really like opening with a wide shot, but in this case I should probably choose a different angle. Some shots of the session would just be pretty boring: an old dude with headphones hunched over a guitar and staring at a computer screen...hardly entertaining.

Exactly so when you cut from old dude to the singer ….experience and talent the old always make the new look better.

It happens to me often when I get back from a shoot I always regret why didn’t I think of getting this or that shot.
From your other posts I see we have a lot in common.

Looks good Laurence, I think we are trying the same things at the same time with the GH3 :)



My first outing with GH3 for music as well, first time trying to do 2 cameras as well and using the multi camera in Vegas and matching the audio etc. was live so had to make do with lighting and sound. Sound and wide shots recorded on the GH3 with Rode video mic on it. f2.8 ISO400 on the 25mm Panasonic prime, in retrospect I should have gone tighter with my 12 - 35 but I was worried about available light and knew I could go to f1.4 on the prime. As it turned out there was plenty and I could have gone down another stop, tried to just expose her.

Close shots are hand held with my old SD 90, have a monopod for next time, knew it was going to be trouble matching the two cameras but not so bad for a first go. I'll just film continuously on the second camera next time, took loads of short clips which meant I had to match them all where as if I had one long one I could have matched it once and then edited with multi cam easy, live and learn!

The GH3 wide shots are just sharpened but apart from that as it came off the camera, was pleased how the underexposed blacks came out wasn't sure if they were going to go blocky or not. the SD90 have variable aperture through the zoom range and had it underexposed at 0db gain used LAB and color curves to try and match the exposure and color of the GH3 and the GH3. Had white balance set to the bulb setting on both whichever kelvin that is, tried to set them both with a grey card to start with but that was going nowhere in those conditions can't set kelvin in the SD90 so thought that was best bet to try and get them close the same.


Mark

Is it possible to show the words on the screen without getting in trouble with copyright?

My speech hearing is extremely poor especially when it comes to music I am not familiar with. Basically if I already know the words I (phantom) hear them. If not, I do not hear them at all.

I did not understand any of the words she sang. She does have a great voice.

Forgot the camera, hard to forget that lighting :(

If you can't use bounce and/or scrims to soften the shadows then show the lights in the frame. Then the shadows have motivation.


Bob.

>>>>Forgot the camera, hard to forget that lighting :(

Ouch. Wasn't going to comment but that lighting, on the opening shot, to boot, kind of sets the stage for the whole video. Now, lighting, as we all know, is probably the hardest thing to accomplish on a small budget so I understand the difficulty, but the hard, direct light, lighting everything, the drum booth, the bass amp, etc... Zero mood. Would have been much better served to have all of that almost completely dark... I really don't mean to be critical, I'm sure you get the point. The other thing, "an opening shot" is something to consider, I think it can be accomplished quite easily, with minimal "added" time. Compose an opening shot, something arty, low angle maybe, with lights in etc, just for the opening 5 seconds when you know you're going to cut to the close up, can be done after you've done the rest. As far as the original context of the message, the quality of the camera, beautiful, nice shallow depth of field, very cinematic quality to it.

"My speech hearing is extremely poor especially when it comes to music I am not familiar with"

Funny you should say that. I've always been much better with melody than with lyrics and usually just can't make out the words of most songs. It's not age, I've been this way for 50 years, which is all my life.

Anyway, this is a popular song and if you knew its name you could find the lyrics.

Lawrence,
Lighting-wise, it doesn't have to be stellar for a demo but the wide shot is very distracting. If it matters it needs to be fixed or replaced.

As for white balance and exposure, never use auto. Auto is your enemy. Fix the camera to a setting and then light for it if you can. For white balance, shine an ungeled light on a white card and grab the white off of that. Basically the same process Musicvid is describing but this way you turn it into a ritual at the start of any setup.

Otherwise it looked and sounded fine for a demo. I heard a bauble in an audio cut during one of the dissolves, but I wasn't looking for audio flaws. I wonder if you could get away with an audio cut before the dissolve starts?

Rob

The GH3 is so damn impressive. The detail of her hair are so clear. Make me want to get a GH3 for video cam. But I love Canon DSLR and I love their L lenses. I shoot 50/50 still/video. Tough decision for me.

I replaced the opening and closing wide shots with some stills (also from the GH3) and some overlaid titles. Looks better to me. The color is a bit better now as well. I didn't notice any audio strangeness at the edits but I'm sure you are right about it being there. I will listen a bit closer. The bass rushes a little at the bridge and I want to fix that as well.

https://vimeo.com/59181131

That felt much better, well done.
I felt way more positive about it because I was being led into and out of it by nice shots. The previous closing shot left me feeling the talent wanted to be somewhere else.

I had a quick go at trying to get her top looking less red in one of ths shots. I kind of sort of got there but I think the AWB plus the mix of tungsten and nasty fluro was really setting you up for a headache in post.

Bob.

There are fluros there but I am absolutely positive they were turned off. I think it was just the AWB being bombarded with hard colors.

Nice redo. The changes definitely make it a stronger piece. That exemplifies the editing process, it's never done until you have to deliver it.

Very nice, Laurence - like it a lot. :)

How many angles did you shoot on this one?

Ulf

Some moire appears on the Mic from time to time.

I saw the moiré on the mic wind screen as well. I also saw a slight amount of moiré on some bricks on a shoot last week. The thing is that it's just so much less moiré and aliasing than I got with my Nikon DSLR that it hardly bothers me. I'd say the line skipping problems are less than a quarter as bad as what I'm used to coming from a DSLR.

Much better Laurence, a lot more engaging.

The bass rushes a little at the bridge. I think I will slide it back a little, add some harmonies, and call it a finished project. The next time I have to deal with stage lights I will just preset the white balance to tungsten or maybe a hair higher and really watch the exposure on the face. I do wish the GH3 had zebras.