How to light a stage show for video

[unclesteve]

Hi everyone,

would appreciate some do's and don'ts when lighting a stage show that is to be video filmed. I would like to help the video crew as much as possible without causing problems for the audience. The show will run for 5 performances but will only be video filmed during one performance. Any advice appreciated,

 

Steve

[paulears]

the bit about 1 performance is pretty critical. If there is ANY chance they will shoot another night, then lighting gets more complicated. Cutting together shots when the op has been busking is really tricky - something I do quite a bit now. One show I'm editing was shot two nights running with different camera positions each night. Great edit until you go from cam 2 to 4 and discover night 2 was blue in the chorus and night 1 was red! damn.

 

The biggest headache will be contrast ratio. Is everybody lit? I know this sounds a bit daft, but the front line often have a lot more light thrown on them, leaving the drummer and maybe bass player in a bit of a murk. Live, you can see everything, but to the camera - the back line just vanish into the murk!

 

The opposite thing happens if the front man/woman is follow spotted - they end up a total white splodge if very careful attention to lense aperture isn't high on the list.

 

For the video crew - they will normally either work independently - with each cameraman looking after their own exposure settings, or if cabled up, this function gets looked after centrally. To make life easier for them - try to resist the temptation to do too much flashing from black to full. So if you normally flash colours from a button per colour, try to flash up from around 50% - so for four colour flashing, set the four colours to 50%, then flash over, so that way, the effect of no flash buttons down isn't to plunge the stage into darkness - that is something video people hate. If you can, get them to give you a couple of monitors from the main cameras - that way you can adjust what you do with the lights when you see how the camera sees it. They will need/want you to give them something white to balance to - so having at least one open white lantern that they can use to align the cameras to will make them happy. If you're using disharge fixtures are you going to use any colour correction. The reality is that if you as the op can see the monitor, the results should be fine.

[unclesteve]

Hi Paulears,

many, many thanks for your comments. This will help me a lot. Al though the show doesn't have a band as such ( It's actually a Scout Gang Show ) I can understand your advice and thank you for your quick response. Any further comments would be appreciated.

 

Steve

[timtheenchanteruk]

I always feel that a show is to be performed for live, and should be lit for live performance, the video comes second, if an effect looks great for the show, but not on the vid, I personally would go for the show side. other than that, ive seen problems where the rear of FOH lights has been in the camera veiw, the camera has adjusted for these light levels, leaving the performance in darkness

[Ynot]

would appreciate some do's and don'ts when lighting a stage show that is to be video filmed.

My personal approach to video filming of shows is that I make no changes to a lighting plot to compensate - whilst the video MAY generate a few quid if they sell them to cast post-show, the real customers are the ones that occupy the seats in the theatre. I see the change of lighting for any reason other than to make it better for THEM is wrong in principle.

The same goes for audio.

 

Last year's panto (that I TD for) is a classic - at the post-show post-mortem (looking at what went well/wrong/etc) one of the producers (who was also lead in the show and a full time freelance TV cameraman/producer) comlained that he NEVER wanted to use plate mics in his shows again as the noise from footfalls etc was way too much. despite him being on stage and never actually being out front hearing what the audience did, he continued to insist on this, even though I assured him that when I went out into the house on several occasions to assess the band mix during the run, I felt at no time that it was a problem. The fact was that he was taking his conclusions based on listening to the audio track of the video/DVD, which took it's general feed direct from the plates.... So no real surprise about the excess foot noise (tho I don't think it was too bad, even then!)

 

But he won (on this occasion) mainly because I couldn't be a***d to argue the toss - he'll probably have to hire in extra stand-mounted floats this year to cover the chorus stuff, so in the end it's the company's loss. But that compromise was made AFTER the show ended - in a similar vein to LX, I wouldn't sanction a change mid-run that would affect what the audience heard. The vid would just have to accept what we sent it or sling up their own mics.

 

TD

[paulears]

...........the camera has adjusted for these light levels, leaving the performance in darkness

 

Professional cameras have few auto features - and the auto features they have are for panic/no rehearsal/have no idea what is going to happen circumstances. Focus and exposure are normally manual adjustments - so they can happily ignor spurious highlights and lowlights (even if they do look very strange)

 

Gang Show.

 

Lighting wise should be a lot easier - trouble is there will be a tendency for everything to look very bland to the audience - Ynot's comment on the audience being most important ar quite correct - from the lighting mans viewpoint. From the video crews perspective, they are just an annoyance. I wear multiple hats (big head, - no comments please). I remember this year moaning at my theatre crew for accidentally becoming visible in one show - insisting that they need to crawl on their chests to get onstage to cure a problem. In another music show, I spent the entire performance on stage with a camera jib arm - in full view. No doubt annoying all sorts of people. In other shows I've actually blocked the eyeline of punters paying £18 a ticket. They moaned (I would have too) but this was where the management wanted a camera and they got it. Most cameramen I know simply don't worry about this - but I always feel very guilty. LX, sound and stage management always have different needs and usually don't agree - I guess adding a video element is just another competing department - there will always be losers?

[MarkPAman]

Steve

 

You don't say if this will be with pro gear or not. If it is going to be done with c0nsumer cameras, then be aware that red light plays havoc with the auto focus.

[Brian]

I always feel that a show is to be performed for live, and should be lit for live performance, the video comes second,...

Although it might be that more people will see the video, and more money will be raised from the video, than pay to see the live show. A rubbish video recording will be rubbish today and tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. A live show whose lighting is adjusted to suit video is but a moment in time.

[Ynot]

I always feel that a show is to be performed for live, and should be lit for live performance, the video comes second,...

Although it might be that more people will see the video, and more money will be raised from the video, than pay to see the live show. A rubbish video recording will be rubbish today and tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. A live show whose lighting is adjusted to suit video is but a moment in time.

This I would doubt for all but the top level of video filming of professional shows - in which case I'd expect that there would a) be higher quality equipment in use and b) be lots more advance discussion of the technical aspects across the disciplines.

 

This event, a gang show, will be a wholly amateur live show, and the expected video audience pretty much limited to SOME of the participants, so very low in comparison to an audience across the run.

 

TD

[p.k.roberts]

Without wishing to enter the discussion about whether the show is lit for the live audience or the video audience (coward that I am!), a few points spring to mind. As has been previously said, high contrast scenes and video just don't mix, so you may choose to make some compromise here - would it be possible to run a camera on a wide shot prior to the main 'filming night' and have a look at the footage to determine whether the results are acceptable or not?

One common way of filming this type of event is to have one camera on a 'locked off wide' and other 'staffed' cameras picking up other shots (this means that you've always got the wide as a 'safety' to cut back to). However this may mean that that shot has a large amount of audience in it, which will appear as a large black hole. As a consequence, you might choose to add a glimmer of side light onto the audience (think about the way audiences appear on TV shows). The final point is to perhaps to give your camera operators some sort of brief about who does what in each number, otherwise you may well find them all chasing the same shot all of the time - not much use when it comes to the edit.

[paulears]

in this case, I'm guessing that the OP simply wants to make the video crew's life as simple as possible. Almost certainly they've done this kind of thing before and won't be fazed by any of the content - which, isn't within the remit of the lx people.

 

For what it's worth, giving each camera a headset/comms system is worth doing - even if the cameras are independent. At least then you can get unique footage from each one.

[unclesteve]

Hello again to all,

well what can I say, except again many, many thanks for all of your contributions. The video is to be done by a professional outfit by the way. I am confident now that between us we can produce a reasonable video without to much detriment to the audience's enjoyment for one performance. I am now told that indeed a dry run and extensive notes will be made at the first performance.

 

Just sticking with the Scout motto "be prepared"

 

Thanks again,

 

Steve

[Shez]

I've seen the results of a couple of "professional outfits" who specialise in videoing school / college shows etc and they've actually been pretty dire. (On one occasion, cameraman turned up and plonked a pair of SM58s with sennheiser transmitters on the front of the stage without so much as a word to the sound man about which frequencies his 12 radio mics were using...)

 

They generally won't have seen the show before so don't know what's due to happen and where, which means mostly wide shots.

 

With a good camera (>£5k) and operator (priceless!) the results can be pretty good, even with saturated reds. The last show that I lit that was due to be filmed, I didn't change anything for the camera, but the coverage was fairly even with not too extreme contrast. Some fairly natural lighting, some very saturated, but looks pretty good on the video. A lot of it is down to the camera's capabilities though - mediocre ones just won't cut it.

[Bobbsy]

...I've had a supposedly professional company come to video an amdram show I was working on, set up a few feet from my sound desk, and use the on-camera mic even though I offered a board feed. What I could/would have given him would have been a mix of some C451EBs I had on the front of the stage, a fully miked band and 20ish radio mics on the principles. The vidiot (in this case the term is accurate) was adamant his single on camera mic would be better.

 

Needless to say, the results on the recording were useless.

 

As for the original question, there's been lots of good information so far. There's only one point I'd add (which you may or may not be able to use, depending on how much you want to change things). Lighting for video tends to be better with less "top" light and more from the front and sides to avoid shadows around the eyes and under the nose. Similarly, a bit of back light on the hair and shoulders helps the actors stand out from the background...flat toppy light tends to look a bit one dimensional when the camera zooms in.

 

Bob

[Don Allen]

Concert Lighting : Techniques, Art and Business by James Moody covers lighting concerts that are being filmed and is worth a read, as it explains the reasons behind lighting for video shoots.

 

My policy is to provide good live music lighting as that is what the audience paid to see, but will make some concessions for video. My gel selection will have a closer match so instead of using Lee 010 med yellow, I will use Lee 104 Amber as it is a closer match to the reds and instead of deep blues such as Congo blue, I will lighten them up. I learnt this technique from Rohan Thornton who does most of Channel 9 Australian live music shows, in one of our ALIA tours.

 

I ask the cameraman what he is trying to achieve and will add extra lighting to the area he is filming without losing the live feel.

 

I DO NOT provide a white stage wash to compensate for someone bringing in a cheap camera. The sensitivity of cameras in increasing which means there is no reason to use old cameras.

 

The point of filming over several nights is an important one. Cliff Richard started filming a show in England, then toured it to Australia where the accountants designed the rig and they then realised they could not do any more filming, so had to have the English rig shipped to New Zealand to allow filming to be completed. An example of a very expensive lesson.

 

If there are multiple takes for a video, I set and forget so the cameraman can edit any shot from any take, or program the lighting so I can repeat it.