On tour with marble
Filming a tour video takes many hours of driving, drinking, talking, laughing, grooving and improvising. Having just filmed a weeks worth of tour footage I am feeling hyped up. Not only did I get to spend a significant amount of time with an incredibly fun group of people but I also got a chance to flex my creative muscle and get a wide variety of shots to build into something later.
This is a fun type of filmmaking that I haven't gotten a lot of time with, trying to capture the energy of a concert through a lens is a fantastic challenge. I think most music is best experienced live, the motion of the crowd, the flow of drinks, the energy breathing off the performers and the permanent destruction of your ear drums are just a few of the things that make it unique. Capturing all that may be a challenge but I also believe that it can be done.
To capture the energy of the performances I experimented with wide angle shots but pretty much scrapped them all in favor of the close tight frame. I feel like it amplifies the motion of the performers and provides a unique perspective that is actually something you don’t get attending a live show. I’ll keep the wide angle shots but I don’t anticipate using much of them. I played with motion, trying to move in organic ways to feel the rhythmic bob of the crowd. This was very difficult to do while also trying to keep the subjects in focus but In the dozen hours of footage I got it right enough times to have plenty of options. Framing the subject was fun to play with, so many options when you can wander around a new venue each night and find angles. Getting footage while not distracting the crowd was another consideration. A camera floating around the stage is hard not to look at, and a camera behind your head causes most people to freeze if they notice it. I just kept moving and used more zoom, it worked well enough.
Overall, I feel good about what I captured and hope to get many more projects similar to this. The footage probably won’t be released anytime soon since it was captured for a later project. But in the meantime I pulled some stills that I will put on my website and that Marble will be sharing. Stay tuned…
