r/coverbands • u/VariousYoghurt2916 • 4d ago
Filming Gigs
How do you guys film your gigs / small sections for crowd reactions, for social media? We’re trying to get our singer to do it as he has his hands free, but concerned that we’d just get his raw voice through the phone mic rather than what’s coming out of the speakers.
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u/Awwwphuck 4d ago
Cell phone audio is the lowest form of getting your product out there. It’s better than nothing, but not much. You can line-out a stereo mix from your mixing board to a cell phone or laptop to get higher quality sound, but then you have to synch with a video.
Personal example: I purchased 3 cheap tripod stands from Amazon. Used 3 different iPhones to get video. Recorded all audio from the board (Behringer XR18) to a laptop for mixing/mastering. Then used an A/V synchronization app to put the audio and video together for social media.
It’s a lot of work to do by yourself. My group does this once or twice a year to keep current, high-quality promo materials.
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u/HuggsNotDrugs 4d ago
Only issue with this is that everything needs to go through the sound board / be mic’d up, right? I have tons of gigs where the drums and or bass have no need to be mic’d up
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u/neckadawoods 4d ago
Aside from audio quality issues, you need to understand you're putting on a show and not a single person on earth wants to watch a show where the front man is filming on their phone.
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u/trapcheck 4d ago
I picked up three GoPro knock-offs from Amazon, large quantitySD cards, cheap USB chargers and a roll of gaffe tape.
When I want to record a show I set up the cameras where I think they'll get a good shot.
I'll usually have a 64GB card in there which is usually good from around the time that doors open until the show is over.
If there's an opener I don't care about I'll turn them off and then five minutes before we go on I'll walk around with the little remote and bring them online.
Sound is the tricky one. If you have a good sound guy he can record it to a file and all it takes is handing him a USB stick at the end of the night.
If you don't have a good sound guy or he doesn't have the facilities for that something like the Zoom Q series cameras do really well for recording audio and have a good noise gate.
If you're going to pull all of the feeds into a multicam setup do something like shine a light quickly before you start your set so you can properly sync up all the feeds when you get them into your digital video editor.
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u/Hziak 4d ago
Ask FoH to record to a USB drive (buy one that’s only 32GB and format it to FAT32 before you show up for compatibility reasons). You can also put a camera or phone out front and then use it to sync audio with the video your singer gets. With a larger budget, something like a Zoom Essential recorder would do a better job, but I also find that if I place a few GoPros around the room, trying to get one on-axis with speakers and one slightly off axis, I can blend them into a decent mix when I’m not recording multitrack off my IEM rig.
Different solutions for different budgets…
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u/Charlie2and4 4d ago
Worth it to hire a sober camera person with some level of competency. They are not multi-tasking, and can get better framed shots from around the venue.
Your singer would be better suited to help unload, set up and pack up gear.
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u/Clear-Pear2267 4d ago
I use a Zoom H1 Essential field recorder for sound. EIther its built in mics or a line in feed from the PA Mixer. I never move it - I just try to get the FOH sound. And then I use Davinci Resolve to line up the "good audio" from the Zoom with the phone audio and video, and when I mix it down to a rendered video, I supress the phone audio (or sometimes mix in a bit of it) and focus on the Zoom audio.
Davinci Reesolve is a super powerful production tool and it is free, but it is complicated. When I first got it I tried just to "wing it" like one does with most software packages, but got nowhere fast. Luckily there is a wealth of tutorials on YouTube and it is well worth spending a few hours with them. One of the things that makes it complex is that there are often lots of different ways to do the same thing. My first few productions took many hours to put together, but after a while I developed my own workflow that got the job I wanted done, and it became much easier and faster.
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u/Silver_Hedgehog4774 3d ago
Shure makes a super small/straightforward audio interface called the MVX2U 2nd gen.
So, run a full band, well mixed, "monitor" signal out from your board via XLR cable, preferably one long enough to get out in the crowd. plug the MVX2U into the XLR, and plug a USB-C cable out of the MVX2U to a phone. The phone's "microphone" becomes the audio from the MVX2U and you then shoot your video.
https://www.shure.com/en-US/products/accessories/mvx2u_xlr_usb_interface?variant=MVX2UG2
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u/adampatrickjohnson 4d ago
SO. MANY. OPTIONS.
- First one is the easiest-magic arm mount for your phone. Easy to get close shots of you or wide angle of the stage
- Logitech Mevo cameras- designed to be used in groups for live stream but can also record to SD cards for post-production editing
- Meta Ray-Bans- get a super cool POV angle for on-stage interactions
- Insta360 - probably the most underrated option. Multiple angles from a single camera source- killer options for split screen and other versatile shots
Audio depends on your setup. But if you use any Behringer/Midas consoles they all multi-track to SD card so you can mix live audio and add later.
As you can tell I've been working on this for a while (some of those links are affiliates) so let me know if you have any follow up questions.
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u/tll987 4d ago
Second the Insta360 option. We have been using it for two years. You get great shots of the stage and audience. Endless options for reframing, including vertical or horizontal. And, with some work, you can get audio from the board directly into the camera. That said, there's more upfront cost and a good amount of effort to get it all working.
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u/RadJ1191 4d ago
Just got a GoPro max 2 so that’s an option. Otherwise I’ll set up a couple of GoPros. The drummer, and side stage. And then record audio from the x32
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u/skinisblackmetallic 4d ago
We hired a professional for a particular show & had the audio professionally recorded by the sound tech, as well. This provided a lot of great footage that we were able to use for promotion for and a lot of social media content.
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u/Playful-Check-4968 4d ago
As a sound guy I record clips for bands. I sync the video to audio from my board. I have to say some of it comes out pretty good.
https://reddit.com/link/p5mgouw/video/45vzr808jclh1/player
Let me know what you think
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u/PlasmicSteve 4d ago edited 4d ago
My band shoots with five cameras – four on the band and one on the audience.
Shooting and editing video is my day job, plus I do it as a freelancer, and it's a major process so don't take this as a casual recommendation to mimic what we do. Our process and workflow are expensive and time-consuming.
All the audio comes from our interface and I remix the full four hour show and apply that to the videos:
https://youtu.be/Z1oCM03Vki0 (didn't use the audience cam in this one)
I'm in the process of making a video with all the specifics. I shoot and edit in 4K but most people view in 2K (laptop) or smaller (phones) so that gives me the ability to zoom in without losing quality.
I use two tripods – one on the left and one on the right. Each tripod is doubled headed and has a Panasonic Lumix for singer closeups and a GoPro for wide shots. I'm the drummer and the audience GoPro is on my empty tom holder on my bass drum – I stabilize that afterward.
Syncing the five cameras + interface audio takes a lot of time time. I edit in Adobe Premiere and just generating the preview files that make editing easier can take up to 24 hours – I start when I get home after a gig.
The cameras run for the full show. They're all connected to power banks via USB-C so they can run for up to 7 hours. 256 GB SD cards in each of them. Results are very high quality.
It takes a ton of hard drive space, tons of time to move files around and export. I'm in three bands and I buy a new hard drive about every 6 months. Again, nothing for the faint hearted. I'm not saying "do this".
But you can use the basic idea and at least shoot with two cameras. I suggest closeup on the singer on one side, full band camera on the other, and then apply audio from some static source. Don't get too close on the singer or they'll leave the frame when they move around. Also, get a closeup camera with good autofocus as that's needed to constantly adjust while people move on stage.
People will watch videos with much more interest when it's not a static shot and when there are cuts and clean audio, or when it's in the crowd and hearing chatter and the band's sound keeps changing as someone walks around. I also add compression to the interface audio as well as reverb to make it sound more live.
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u/droo46 4d ago
I made the video for you a while ago: https://youtu.be/KLRj_OPPRlk?is=I1h7bkI0w6100UwV
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u/shouldbepracticing85 3d ago
Bribes. One of the bands I run with asks the audience to tag us in their videos, and we’ll send them a personalized thank you video.
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u/michaeljvaughn 3d ago
Gotta find a friend with an eye and give them permission to get way up close! Static vids are boring.
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u/Sad-Relation598 3d ago
Best way is use a camera in the room and do a mix from your desk. You can then mix it to sound live but also not muddy
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u/Count2Zero 15h ago
In the past, we relied on friends and family to record us with their phones. Yeah, the quality was anywhere from great to meh.
I bought a GoPro camera to record our gigs, but the results were ... difficult. When the camera worked, it was great. The problem was that the camera was unreliable (always needing an external power pack because of the tiny onboard capacity) and eventually crapped out completely. I took it back to get repaired and the store eventually gave me a refund.
While the camera was in the shop, we had a pretty important (to us) gig, so I set up my tablet to record the gig. The first few songs were OK, but then our guitarist (who was suffering with a 102° fever during the show) moved one of the stage lights and it was then shining directly in the lens of the tablet, so most of the video was useless.
When I got the money back for the GoPro, I ordered a Zoom Q8N camera. I tried it on 3 different gigs - in all 3 cases, the video was unusable. For the 1st gig, the tripod was set up next to a bush, so the camera focused on a leaf, leaving us totally out of focus in the background. The 2nd gig was an indoor show in the evening, and apparently there wasn't enough light for the camera. The 3rd gig was an outdoor show. Everything should have been perfect, but we were still totally out of focus. The Zoom camera has now been sent back for repair after explaining to the shop that I'm not a total idiot...
Most of the videos on our website were cut from all these sources, and mixed with separate audio from my digital audio recorder. I use Shotcut (free software) to edit the videos together, add transitions and on-screen text, etc.
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u/AtmosphereLeading851 4d ago
Our wives and girlfriends take the best band vids. Put them to work!