Plants and Animals 5/19/12 @ The Satellite

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I answered an ad on Craigslist looking for somebody to shoot bands at The Satellite, a local 200 person club. I figured I could do some gigs for fun to broaden my horizons.

After a couple of months of sporadic emails, I finally finalized a date to shoot a show. I only have to do a couple of songs and then edit for upload to The Satellites website.

The first big red flag for the gig is that I'm getting paid in Alcohol. I can drink as much as I want. Yeah . . . .

Secondly, the show starts at 11pm, right inside my comfort zone. I asked if I could shoot soundcheck to avoid the crowds and get really good sound. That turned into a no go after an initially positive reaction.

Finally, they asked if I could do the shoot without a tri-pod. Um? Err? Don't you want it to look professional?

Wish me luck.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

No Seals were hurt in the endeavor.

First off, the club was pitch dark and they used red and blue lights on the band. This made for some really nice video footage. I did sneak in a tripod for one of the cameras way in the back, but it needed to be about foot or so taller so I could shoot more band and less back of people's heads.

Probably the high-light of the night came when the tour manager for 'Plants and Animals' came up and asked me who I was with. I said I was with the club. He said no one had told him anything about any shooting. Sigh. There was some back stage wrangling and I was allowed to film two songs, which is pretty standard for concerts.

Fortunately, the band wasn't completely execrable. I was especially afeared after I listened to some of their songs on youTube and was less than impressed. They are much better live.

[Drunk Monk]

Nice! Oh wait, you're one of the dry DOOM bros. Reminds me of when PPFY and I were paid in alcohol to fence in the window of a gay club. They gave us some cash too. And the cage dancers/porn stars invited us to join in a circle jerk. But we passed on that. hock:

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Sure you did.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I think they could have turned off a few more lights.

[youtube]3DLYjwrcTPo[/youtube]

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Next time just film in infrared.

[Drunk Monk]

The back-of-the-house shot didn't do much for me but I liked the rest. I couldn't tell if the base was messed up on my crappy work headphones or if that was the way the sound was.

How much alcohol did they pay you for that?

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Not enough alcohol. Actually, it was a pretty easy gig. I'll probably do it again when next the Queen scampers.

As for the back of the house shot, I had a plan. Damn me and my plans. I was going to set up the camera on the tripod and have one continuous shot from it. Then I could run around with the other cam and get some close ups and medium shots which I would cut into the main vid.

Well, the tripod was too low, although it was as high it could go. I should have set the focus on the back of the house camera to infinity so the stage would have been more in focus. Since it was on auto-focus every time somebody walked close to the camera, it shifted. And I would have lit the whole thing with a bunch of lights hotter than the sun so I could see what was going on.

I don't know what to do about the sound. I turned my microphones down low on the camera so it would peak, but it peaked anyway.

Next time.

[Drunk Monk]

That's a great title for something - a novella, a poem, a short film, or maybe just a thread topic here.