Filming and editing a highlights video from a music festival
Recently, I was commissioned as a cameraman editor to produce a highlights video by Shodement, a Marketing Agency and Artist Management company, for the 2017 Global 12 Music Festival taking place at Cargo in London.
Cameraman editor brief
My brief as a cameraman editor was to produce, film and edit a series of artists’ interviews and performances. As a cameraman, I was to film a varied range of shots from the live stage performances. General view’s (GV’s) of people enjoying the festival from around the venue also needed to be filmed. As an editor, I was then to edit together the footage into a 3-minute highlights film. This film was to be uploaded to the Global 12 Music Festival YouTube channel.
Filming musician interviews Frequency 21 magazine
On the day of the event, I was teamed up with Leo Baldi. Leo was going to be interviewing all the artists on behalf of the Frequency 21 music magazine. After arriving early at the location, we started filming the interviews around noon. Working with Leo we spent around 10 to 20 minutes with each artist. To help record good quality sound, I gave Leo a Sennheiser stick microphone. This was fitted with a transmitter-receiver linked to my Tascam DR60 audio recorder. A Sennheiser directional microphone was fitted onto a tripod as a backup source for the audio. In between interviews, I also filmed a range of general views of the venue and everyone enjoying the day.
Filming on the Cargo live stage
Each of the artists had a booked slot on the Cargo live stage. As I was to deliver an edited highlights film, I was free to move around the stage. I filmed a range of different shots that best suited each performance. For some of the performers, I was able to get up onto the stage to film the best angles. For performers with more musicians, I filmed at the front of the crowd and sides of the stage.
Event streaming by Encode Live
The day’s musical performances were being lit and their sound mix produced by Cargo’s technical team. The event was also being streamed live on YouTube by Vincent Lane from Encode Live. After speaking with Vince, he was happy to give me a copy of the stream video files. This was helpful as I then knew I would have a good copy of all the sound. With his steam footage, I also had a wide angle shot from the performances to use in the edit. One of the benefits of being a cameraman editor is that you can make good decisions on the filming day that will help the edit.
Starting the post-production process
After returning to my edit suite, I copied the media off the camera cards onto my Promise RAID 5 hard drives. I also backed everything up onto a separate RAID 5. Once the media was saved, I created a UHD 25P Avid project and AMA linked the media files into that project. The media was then edited together into a sequence in filmed order. Once edited I then transcoded that sequence into Avid DNxHR media for editing. Over the course of the day I had filmed 4 hours of interviews, GV’s and live performances. I left the transcode running overnight so that it would be ready to edit the next day.
Syncing up the audio to vision
To start the edit, I first synced up the Tascam audio recordings to the camera recorded media using PluralEyes v.3.5. I then went through each interview editing all the best comments together. The Shodement team had supplied me with a music track to edit to. The music included parts without vocals so I edited the best artist sync lines into those non-vocal sections. Once I was happy with the audio edit, I then painted in the best of the other shots. The shots that best portrayed the music festival and artists’ performances were selected for the edit. A few days later I also met up with Vincent who was able to transfer the stream files onto a drive for me. Then, once back at my editing base, I was able to transcode those so that I could also use them in the edit.
Delivering the final edited promotional video
After a few days of further editing, I sent a version to my client Shodement who wrote back to say they loved the edit. A few detailed changes were required along with some logo additions. The final edit of the highlights film was then quickly signed off and uploaded to YouTube.
The Global 12 Music Festival was attended by a happy and friendly crowd with a great vibe. I really enjoyed the creative freedom that I had been given on the filming day. Exploring all the different filming angles and shots from inside the venue was great fun. I loved editing together all the best shots that I had filmed, as well as some of the stream shots that Vince had given me, into something cool and funky. One of my passions is editing to music so for me working as a cameraman editor this was a great gig for me.
The final video was used by Frequency 21 to promote the Global 12 Festival. With over 15 years experience of working as a cameraman editor, I am able to edit any brief efficiently. If you would like my help with filming and editing your music based projects or gigs please get in touch. For more perspective on my skills, please see my testimonials and credits.
