San Francesca – “The Strobe LIght Goes On and On” from Evo Collective on Vimeo.
Once again, via Content Magazine the team and I were able to capture a live performance of a band. However, this time we were able to focus on San Francesca on a more intimate level – we joined them during their tracking session with Damien Wendell in downtown San Jose. This way we were able to capture the band from multiple angles from their multiple takes.
Gear
Canon 5d mkii, 7d, & 60d
11mm-16mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 105mm
2x Manfroto Monopods
3′ Kenova Slider
“500w” Fancier LED Panel
“500w” bi-color FNV LED Panel
2x “120w” light Panels
H4n
JC stayed on the 5d mkii, NG on the 7d, and myself with the 60d.
We wanted to take what we learned from past Day Dream Nation videos and take it to the next level with this shoot. Since it was in a controlled environment, we were able to get more lighting elements down. We also discovered a new technique involving our slider and tripod.
Lighting
Lighting the scene was a bit of challenge. We first had to figure out how to set up the performers. We felt it best to have them facing towards each other, and lighting around them. We had two keys at about the same intensity and distance. We wanted to light up two band members by themselves. By having two keys at opposite angles, their distance worked to our advantage. While one subject was lit with one key, the other looked more like it was receiving a fill because of the distance between light and subject.
As for hair lights, we put some on top of these PA speakers and pointed them down. Though as the day wore on, those small LEDs died down.
My favorite part of the shoot involved Christmas lights. NG’s shot was tight and focused on the lead singer. Though properly lit, the composition wasn’t balanced. What we did to remedy that was put on Christmas lights in the background in order to create a Bokeh. This turned out great as it really just balanced that important tight shot.
Technique
Most of our technique was similar to the last DDN events. However because we had freedom of multiple takes, we checked shots and moved around with band’s each take of the song.
While I was on 60d, I was very amazed at the tripod/slider setup. With the slider directly mounted on the tripod, I combined the sliding motion with a simply pan. This imitated the look of U-tracks. Such a simple camera movement really makes a shot all that more interesting. But creating it from scaled down approach makes it even more enjoyable.
Also, I timed my movements of the slider/tripod move with each 8 measures of the song. As is common in most pop songs, 8 measures is a good amount of time to go through a verse. Doing this made working in post a lot more intuitive.























