Just to show that nothing ever goes as planned, we ended up at the event without the net connection we thought we'd have. So, no blogging from the site. It was probably just as well though. With everything else we did, blogging would have been a bleary, late night chore.
First a bit about the event
The word “grassroots” is too often used to mask an effort by a large entity as a little, handcrafted venture. But “Love's Labor Jam” is a true grassroots happening. Built from the ground up by old friends and grown slowly to include new ones in subsequent years, the Jam brings together musicians and music lovers for the fun of it. In many ways, this was the perfect project for us. At 25 North Filmwurks, we do small scale productions with an eye toward capturing the heart of the matter. The Jam was no exception.
We were a crew of two, shooting 30p on one Panasonic DVC30 and one DVX100B. We used existing lighting: sunlight during the day and stage lights at night. Our primary audio was picked up via a Beyerdynamic MCE 58 run directly via the DVX's second XLR input. Secondary audio was the Shure SM63L through a Studio XLR PRO into the DVC. The DVC was used for performance segments and most of the B roll. The DVX was used for all interviews, performance segments and additional B roll. It was run and gun all the way, except that we had releases taken care of, run of the property – we were even ASKED to be there. Go figure.
Getting in around mid-afternoon on Saturday, our day centered around getting footage of of the event setup and about half the interviews. We also met with the lighting and sound techs. We were happy to find out that audio for all of the performances was being taken direct from the board to DAT tapes.
We got a few rehearsals documented and headed home around 7:00PM. The idea was to get some sleep and be fresh for the following morning. After getting a bite to eat, we headed for a bed.
More tomorrow.