syzygy
17th May 2004, 11:52 AM
Venue: Medicine Bar
Rig: 2 6'x4' screens mounted either side of soundsystem stacks around the stage
Tools: Resolume, Flowmotion, MPEG2 Player, AVE5, V4, Bullet Cams, CV-900 Colour Corrector
Amazing gig! The audio performers were fantastic and we were really pleased with what we did visually.
Wheatamix and Chase (Beatbox) did a great warmup set with Chase somehow getting away with an outrageous amount of swearing (probably because he interspersed it with fantastic beatbox action)
The cameras proved really useful during the beatboxing - We took a bullet cam off its stand and got up close to Chase so that the crowd could see what we was doing behind the mic - giving them more of an idea of just how much effort he puts in to making all those different sounds.
We kept the colour sceme monochrome during this segment of the show and didn't really use any effects on the live camera feed. This is something we have done a few times at gigs where there is a definite main act that people are coming to see and we want to help provide more of an exciting start to the headliner.
The main act was the best performance I've seen in a long time. They played some material from their album that comes out in August - that was fantastic. The three vocalists together over Mark Raes DJing was an amazing sound. I had no idea that Mark Rae sings as well as producing and DJing! Since Mark Rae is Mr Grand Central Records, there was obviously a wealth of fantastic tunes.
When Mark Rae, Veba and Pete Simpson came on, we switched the colour corrector on to give us a red to yellowy orange colour scheme. The colour scheme was varied throughout the rest of the night when the music took changes in pace.
We also started using some freeframe effects on the live camera stream (through resolume) This was extra exciting because we were using some new freeframe effects I've written (more on those later)
Putting the live cameras into resolume through an intermediary DV cam and firewire meant that there was a significant delay on them. In order to counteract this (especially with DJ scratching) we also had a clean feed from the AVE5 (which we used for mixing the cameras) straight to the V4.
Pointing cameras when there is a delay on them is really hard! :) Some of the effects we were using had delay in them too (e.g. alphatrails) which added to the confusion ;)
We had one bullet cam mounted on a 2'6" stick so we could move it around easily between the three performers on stage and the crowd and get lots of different angles. This worked really well, especially moving it around when delay-based effects were applied.
Another thing that worked well was mixing between the uneffected (and undelayed) camera feed and the effected and delayed version. Punching in the effected version on beats or bars looked really good.
Something that was interesting was that, with the right effects, any live camera shot can become interesting. At one stage, we were using the monitors on the front of the stage as a source for effects. The mic cables on stage also became interesting through our new delay channels plugin.
We had great feedback on the visuals from both the crowd (especially when we featured them :) ) and the performers. I think they appreciated that we were being creative with the live camera feeds rather than simply duplicating what the crowd was seeing on stage.
Our new plugins are currently in beta testing and will be released at AVIT North America (10th - 12th June)
Dan.
Rig: 2 6'x4' screens mounted either side of soundsystem stacks around the stage
Tools: Resolume, Flowmotion, MPEG2 Player, AVE5, V4, Bullet Cams, CV-900 Colour Corrector
Amazing gig! The audio performers were fantastic and we were really pleased with what we did visually.
Wheatamix and Chase (Beatbox) did a great warmup set with Chase somehow getting away with an outrageous amount of swearing (probably because he interspersed it with fantastic beatbox action)
The cameras proved really useful during the beatboxing - We took a bullet cam off its stand and got up close to Chase so that the crowd could see what we was doing behind the mic - giving them more of an idea of just how much effort he puts in to making all those different sounds.
We kept the colour sceme monochrome during this segment of the show and didn't really use any effects on the live camera feed. This is something we have done a few times at gigs where there is a definite main act that people are coming to see and we want to help provide more of an exciting start to the headliner.
The main act was the best performance I've seen in a long time. They played some material from their album that comes out in August - that was fantastic. The three vocalists together over Mark Raes DJing was an amazing sound. I had no idea that Mark Rae sings as well as producing and DJing! Since Mark Rae is Mr Grand Central Records, there was obviously a wealth of fantastic tunes.
When Mark Rae, Veba and Pete Simpson came on, we switched the colour corrector on to give us a red to yellowy orange colour scheme. The colour scheme was varied throughout the rest of the night when the music took changes in pace.
We also started using some freeframe effects on the live camera stream (through resolume) This was extra exciting because we were using some new freeframe effects I've written (more on those later)
Putting the live cameras into resolume through an intermediary DV cam and firewire meant that there was a significant delay on them. In order to counteract this (especially with DJ scratching) we also had a clean feed from the AVE5 (which we used for mixing the cameras) straight to the V4.
Pointing cameras when there is a delay on them is really hard! :) Some of the effects we were using had delay in them too (e.g. alphatrails) which added to the confusion ;)
We had one bullet cam mounted on a 2'6" stick so we could move it around easily between the three performers on stage and the crowd and get lots of different angles. This worked really well, especially moving it around when delay-based effects were applied.
Another thing that worked well was mixing between the uneffected (and undelayed) camera feed and the effected and delayed version. Punching in the effected version on beats or bars looked really good.
Something that was interesting was that, with the right effects, any live camera shot can become interesting. At one stage, we were using the monitors on the front of the stage as a source for effects. The mic cables on stage also became interesting through our new delay channels plugin.
We had great feedback on the visuals from both the crowd (especially when we featured them :) ) and the performers. I think they appreciated that we were being creative with the live camera feeds rather than simply duplicating what the crowd was seeing on stage.
Our new plugins are currently in beta testing and will be released at AVIT North America (10th - 12th June)
Dan.