CULVER CITY, CA — Steele Studios (www.steelevfx.com
) recently completed work on a new concert video for Beyonce. I Am… was filmed during her “I Am Sasha Fierce” world tour of 2009-10, which spanned 108 shows across six continents. The film/video diary debuted on ABC Network on Thanksgiving night, and was made available on DVD at Wal-Mart the next day. It’s seeing broader release November 30.
Producer Mark Edwards and visual effects artist Monique Eissing headed up the Steele team. The concert tour featured stage projections that made use of footage from videos Steele had previously finished for Beyonce. This included the black & white performance video If I Were A Boy and Robo Leopard, which Steele co-founder Jerry Steele finished. Eissing finished the videos for Diva and Coin Toss.
Eissing says the concert video was a challenge because of the tight schedule and the varying media sources that were used to capture Beyonce throughout the tour. The studio used its Quantel iQ to conform HDCAM footage, 16mm film transferred to HDCAM SR, home movies, video files from personal video recorders, and even YouTube videos.
“The conform actually continued all the way through the project as there were continual changes to the edit and more footage was being sent in all the time,” Eissing notes. “It helped that the editor kept sending us Final Cut Pro project files. This allowed for an easier transfer of some of the media from our own Final Cut Pro system, which is tied directly to our Quantel iQ.”
Steele was responsible for all the beauty work, including Beyonce’s wardrobe fixes, set and stage fixes, removing cameras and cameramen, removing shadows, adding flashes, and performing lighting changes.
“There are many things on stage you, as an audience member, should not see,” Eissing notes. “All the wires for the audio and video equipment on stage look messy and cluttered. Removing these things is essential to creating a pleasant viewing experience, especially when shown in HD… Additionally, because camera's were shooting Beyonce on stage and projecting her on the screens behind her, we had to do some of the fixes several times: on her person and then on the video screens behind her.”