So the big concert I shot on 7 F350s back in July is just now starting to be released. The footage (4 songs) is being rolled into a DVD release for Dec 12th. that your teenager can buy at Target for $12.99 or whatever.

Anyway, there's some promo links on the web of the finished product:

Entire song:
Windows: http://streamos.wbr.com/wmedia/wbr/tbs/100406/tbs_liar-lb_700.wvx
Quicktime: http://streamos.wbr.com/qtime/wbr/tbs/100406/tbs_liar-lb_700.mov

DVD Trailer (only concert footage is XDCAM HD):
Windows: http://www2.fanscape.com/takingbacksunday/video/dvdtrailer_wmhi.aspx
Quicktime: http://www2.fanscape.com/takingbacksunday/video/dvdtrailer_QThi.aspx

I know there's not too much to be gleamed from web video, except you can see how exceptionally the camera handled all the overexposure from the stage lights. Everybody from Warner Bros. Records (including high up A&R) has used the word "beautiful" almost every time they comment on the project. As have execs at Yahoo! Music, who have seen it on DVD.

I'm told cutdowns of the DVD are going to air on MTV2 and Fuse, I'll investigate as to air dates.

I have to say, working with this camera, from shoot to post with FCP, was a dream. Not at all like the prior 15 months with HDV.

Here's a link to the original thread:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=71662

Good job, Nate!

-gb-

Whoa!

Jim

Wow. Looks great. Fantastic editing.

The footage looks amazing, and as an 18 year old keen on the band the fact it was shot on xd hd is even more insentive to go grab a copy when it comes out just so i can see it in higher quality.

Well Done Nate.

Hey Nate,
The footage looks cinematic indeed.
Were all the angles shot on your 350?
Multiple 350's?
Thanks
Rich

6 F350s, one F330.

I didn't own a 350 yet when this was shot, and I didn't operate a camera on this shoot because I was directing from video village.

Excellent example of what this low cost format can do. Nice work Nate.

Nate,
Thanks for posting the fantastic footage. This is a great example of what can be achieved with great talent and great tools.

Bill

Nate,
Thanks for posting the fantastic footage. This is a great example of what can be achieved with great talent and great tools.

Bill

Welcome aboard, Bill! It will be good to have your knowledge and experience here on DVINFO.

Take care and maybe I'll see you in a couple weeks.

-gb-

Great job Nate.

I see wht you mean about handling the overexposure. It embraced it and turned it into something beautiful.

Were there any live feeds for IMAG or just totally ISO's?

aloha,

Keith

Great job Nate.

I see wht you mean about handling the overexposure. It embraced it and turned it into something beautiful.

Thanks everybody. Yes, there's really cool things happening in how the lights blew out. A note, in the middle of the song cut there's some very saturated yellow lights coming from downstage left and right, at about hip level. In what you see in the link, I had to desaturate everything above 90IRE or so to make broadcast safe, and in doing so, made some ugly yellow to white transitions. In the camera masters, the yellow blows out much much nicer.

Were there any live feeds for IMAG or just totally ISO's?

No IMAG on this particular tour. Even if there would have been, it would have been a different crew, as I was working for Warner Bros for one night only.

All my concert work is camera ISO'd, with feeds to a video village where I don't call shots as much as I give the operators feedback on the frames I want to see. Think of U2's Rattle and Hum, shot 6 or 8 camera 35mm. That's the level I aspire to.

There's no way you can create an edit like I do with live switching. It's a completely different end product, really, and the client in this case is not at all interested in live switching. Same goes for the audio, it's all mutlitracked and post-mixed by somebody who takes the time necessary to make it golden.

[/liveswitch rant] :-)

Excellent job, Nate! ;-)

This XDcam HD is great. Good to see so much great stuff out there...

Could you describe a bit your workflow? FCP->ProTools for Mixdown?

best,
Greg

This XDcam HD is great. Good to see so much great stuff out there...

Could you describe a bit your workflow? FCP->ProTools for Mixdown?



Ooo boy, nooo. Me no do audio. Sometimes the audio recording and mixing will be on my budget, but even then I never touch it.

In this case the audio was recorded by these guys: http://www.lemobile.com/. The truck is parked at the venue's loading dock, and runs a splitter snake inside to the stage. All stage inputs go first into their snake, and then are replicated on outs for the monitors and house.

All channel inputs are then recorded into a ProTools session.

At the end of the night they hand me a couple audio CDs of a live 2-track mix for the rough edit, a couple to the label (so A&R can decide which were the best songs), and then give us a hard drive with a Protools session on it. This drive gets FedExed to the mixer, wherever on earth he is. LeMobile gets a check for $7k for a night of work. Pffft.

Mixer then spends an awful lot of time in ProTools making things sound as good as possible. Sometimes there's overdubs if the band's available, but this particular band is way too busy, so the mixer was on his own. I know that on this one vocals were comped from 15 different nights. I guess it's not expensive to have a simple ProTools rig running at front of house for simple recording, and a lot of larger acts do that these days...collecting material for the next live album.

2 months later I get final mixes in AIFFs and drop them into FCP. And that's how the magic happens.

Great work, Nate. I do similar work to you (on a very scaled down level - one Sony Z1 and a tracked board mix) and it was very cool hearing about a high end production like that from your point of view. I imagine you're probably in Warner Bros' good books now, hey?

Nate- very nice.. What mode were the cameras set-up in. 24P?, 60i?

I've done a few similar shoots, multi-cam iso record, director suggesting shots. Often with my 6m jib or polecam thrown in to the mix. Again audio is done by a pro audio company and like Nate we do the edit to a rough mix. When the final mix arrives and we drop it in the show suddenly comes to life. It always impresses me how different the final mix sounds. It's the small details that make the difference between an average production and a superb production.

Nate- very nice.. What mode were the cameras set-up in. 24P?, 60i?

24p is the name of the game.

Hi Nate,

Great looking footage! Have you ever bothered to capture from HD-SDI outputs, or is the footage recorded to disk that good?

Stuart

Great looking footage! Have you ever bothered to capture from HD-SDI outputs, or is the footage recorded to disk that good?


Of course it's that good. Would kinda suck to buy a camera that wasn't usable unless you had a computer tethered to it.

Tethering isn't viable for a lot of the work I do, which is either multicam or doc-style run & gun.

Hi Nate,

I think I worded my question poorly. I realize the footage is great right off the discs. I should have asked if anyone even bothers to use HD-SDI out since the disc footage IS great. It's amazing how much more you can get from 35mB/sec vs. 25mB/sec (not to mention 1/2" chips).

If my upcoming HD project does allow for it, I'm purchasing either the 330 or 350. If I end up with a 1/3" camera, I'll try and grab HD-SDI output to maximize quality. In other words, why not just get the 330 or 350 and not worry about quality?

Stuart

Just found out that a cutdown of the DVD is airing on Fuse multiple times next week:

d’Fused:
Taking Back Sunday Louder Now DVD: Part One
Fuse gives Taking Back Sunday fans
a preview of the band’s new DVD.

Premieres: Monday 12/11 @ 10pm EST
Repeats: Tuesday 12/12 @ 2am EST
Thursday 12/14 @ 2:30pm EST
Monday 12/18 @ 3am EST
Thursday 12/21 @ 8pm EST
Saturday 12/23 @ 11:30pm EST

Remember, only the concert portions are XDCAM HD!

DVD was released today.

For those of you desperate to see 24p XDCAM HD footage, you can run to your local Target or Walmart and pick up Taking Back Sunday, Louder Low:Partone. It would be in the CD section, it's packaged as a CD instead of DVD (clever marketing).

were the camera controls operated from video village...or did each camera operator control his iris, focus, etc? if the camera operator did it all...how much time would you guess did you spend on color correction...if you had any?

jeremiah

ps....BEAUTIFUL STUFF!!! going to buy the dvd for sure

Very nice concert footage!

i got the dvd...watched it...and i see lots of artifacts...everywhere...lots of blockys...looks like interlace artifacts..and some other artifacty kind of noise...is this the cam...or the poor compressions job done on the DVD?

Poor compression on the DVD.

Also, I originally delivered the 4 songs on Digibeta, from a XDCAM native to uncompressed SD 10-bit Quicktime.

A couple days later, I was asked if I could provide the DVD editor with a Quicktime file, so I gave them the 10-bit uncompressed SD QT.

They had problems with that, so they finally broke down and told me they were editing the entire program in DV because all of the road footage was of course DV.

So in the end, you're seeing twice compressed DV of my original, and then compressed to MPEG-2 in a not-so-hot fashion.

I promise you, the original is beyond pristine. That's really disappointing that you noticed. Oh well.

There is however some aliasing in my downconverts, from Compressor. There needs to be a certain amount of vertical filtering go reduce the detail, otherwise you get interlace twitter, with is some of what you're seeing...like a .5 pixel blur in the vertical direction. So a little of it is my fault, but 90% of it is the DV business and the DVD compression.

yeah...it was very noticable...first thing I saw. That's so frustrating when you can't control the final product and output..especially when it's something you work hard on and are proud of...but..other than the compression...beautiful work!

Hi Nate,

cool footage!

Question: Have the cams been TC synched or did they run free without any Genlock/TC hookup?

And: How has the f330 been used - probably NOT with stock lens I guess?!? ;-)

(what lenses have been used btw?)

ULI

Question: Have the cams been TC synched or did they run free without any Genlock/TC hookup?

We tried to sync all via the audio mobile truck's house TC and were unsuccessful. Realized later it was the wrong kinda of TC signal. It slowed me down about 3 minutes in the edit.

And: How has the f330 been used - probably NOT with stock lens I guess?!?

I think we had a Fuji 2/3" HD lens on the 330, which was at FOH position. The rest of the 350s had Canon 2/3" J11x4.5 broadcast series SD lenses, which were tack sharp.

Last Question: I´d be interested what the total production budget of the video (not audio) segement was.
Hiring 7x 350 (or330) + operators + etc etc. is quite a big project already. Postproduction took quite a while,too , so I´d really like to know what the budget was roughly.

Nate, can you give us an idea?

Thanks for all your very helpful and interesting threads!

Merry X-Mas to all!

ULi

Not quite $60k.

But what's important is that I was able to do post all at home, including Digibeta & HDCAM outputs.

sorry...bumping my question...but

were the camera controls operated from video village...or did each camera operator control his iris, focus, etc? if the camera operator did it all...how much time would you guess did you spend on color correction...if you had any?

Sorry, forgot to answer.

As my background is film (as opposed to live switched video), operators were on their own with everything. I gave occasional notes over comm if I wanted an iris down or up.

I spent time on color correction, but none on making the cams match. My experience on multi-camera shoots with modern cameras is that if the settings are identical, then the cameras will match.

60k - thats what I roughly estimated.

Great project - what a pity that it has been cut down so heavy on the final DVD...

Keep us on track of more f350 projects!

ULi

Looking good Nate! Did you had to convince Warner to go XDCAM HD (instead of HDCAM or so) or not at all?