Asher Roth Concert with Live Nation Innovative Multicamera Production

I was asked to work as a camera operator at the House of Blues for Asher Roth. The production company that hired me was D2 Productions and they were liaisons for Live Nation. D2 Productions is a Boston based company and I had worked for them in the past. I had never worked for Live Nation until now but I was very impressed how they have build video production facilities inside the many Live Nation music venues. They have 150 Panasonic HVX-200 cameras in different venues in the US, Europe, Canada, and Asia. The Boston House of Blues was one of those venues and this blog entry will talk about the technology that Live Nation is using to bring concerts and other entertainment to your television, computer, and even cell phone!

This was the first show using the new Live Nation equipment and D2 Productions who will be the caretakers. When I entered the House of Blues, I was greeted with a bunch of road cases that contained all the gear we would be using to capture Asher Roth with five cameras. The five Panasonic HVX-200 P2 DVCPRO HD cameras were shipped in from LA and they were all tossed in a big Pelican Case. They were wrapped in bubble wrap and this was obviously a temporary solution until D2 could get them into proper custom cases.

I was asked to unpack the cameras and make sure they were all set. I had used this Panasonic model camera before and I matched them up with Bogen HDV 503 tripods. I also grabbed a few Panny batteries and made sure the cameras powered up. We were shooting in 720p 30p and the show was to be balanced for 5600k light color temperature. Real quick observation regarding the HVX-200: I do not like the low res 4:3 viewfinder. The focus ring on the lens slides around way too easily and the camera is fat and hard to hold! The fact it shoots 100mbps DVCPRO HD is nice, but the cards are pricey and the DVCPRO HD codec is old…. Hey, I’m a Sony guy! The Panny HPX-170 at least has HD SDI out! The 200 only has analog component HD out.

I met up with a guy from Hawaii who was at the Boston venue making sure the system was in working order. His name was Ross and he handed me a SD memory card with all the settings for the HVX-200 cameras. Most of the settings were factory default, but a few like Gamma (set to CINELIKE D), detail (set to -4) and Matrix (set to ENRICHED) were custom for the “Live Nation Look”. The SD card was inserted into each of the cameras and the settings were loaded so that all the cameras matched up.

We were going to be using the camera mic on channel two, just for audio reference. Channel one was reserved for a timecode audio feed from the control room.

In order to get the HD image to the control room (located upstairs and to the right of stage), we used a Firewire to CAT5 repeater. This little blue module was made by NEWNEX and it worked very well. It would have been impossible to send HD over Firewire cable because of the long distance and these cameras did not have the option of HD SDI over coax. This inexpensive box was the perfect solution and it was powered over the CAT5 cable.

During our setup, Asher Roth was running around the stage slamming his smack on whoever was listening. That sound check was SOOO loud. It was so loud that I could not even hear my own mouth and you all know how much I love to hear myself talk!

We used a “loom” multi-cable for each camera setup. We had two cameras front of house on tripods, two handheld cameras in the pit between stage and crowd and a fifth camera on stage with the drummer. It was important that the cable we moved around not only carried the CAT5 hd footage back to the control room but it also carried an XLR for intercom and a standard def composite video feed for a rough live line cut. The cable pictured above had a few extra cables on it (like the second cat5) and this was used with an optional robotic camera setup. I will not go into this since we did not use the robos today.

The HD cat5 footage was captured directly into hard drives with timecode in the control room. But, the director also needs to be able to cut a live show for reference. Each of the cameras in this system also had to feed the control room with a standard composite feed to a switcher for the line cut. I will get into more of how this worked a little later in this blog

The cameras now looked like “Franken-Cams”. We used tie wraps to hold the CAT5 box under the HVX 200 internal Mic. These cables were also tied off to the camera operator’s belt for strain relief. We ran all the cameras off battery so we did not have to have a/c power run to each of the cameras. The batteries held up well with their four plus hour run time.

There really was no good way to keep the firewire cable plugged into the camera while we were going to be running around shooting the concert. This was a vital connection. We were not recording locally so if this firewire connection was severed, the feed would be gone and the editors would have a hard time piecing together the timecode in post. I decided to use the tried and trusted “gaffers tape” solution. At least the firewire connector was a right angle!

In a little cramped room on the second floor of the Boston House of Blues was the very warm and muggy control room. All the equipment was in “fly-pack” cases so that it could move to a new location and venue to preform all of its glorious functions if called upon. Today, this room would include the director, audio guy, producer and that guy from Hawaii.

Speaking about that guy Ross from Hawaii, I got to talk to him about this innovative setup. This system was actual a product of Ross’s technical pioneering. Ross created a system, with help from a group of software engineers from Holland, that he could set up in different locations around the world. Ross could monitor the status of each system from his laptop and broadband internet connection anywhere on the planet as if he were in the control room at the actual venue! The photo above is a picture of the brains of the entire operation. The custom software runs on a Windows-based rack mounted PC and it shows the user red, yellow and green lights. Each light indicates things like timecode, video, audio, and temperature. If everything is green, the system is capturing all the pieces needed for the editors in post. This computer also simultaneously spits out a encoded webcast that can be viewed as soon as the show is done world wide via internet. This webcast includes the live line cut that the director was switching during the show. This line cut includes burned in timecode so that the viewer can instantly begin to make timing notes for post production. Obviously, some camera cuts are not perfect so the entire thing will be tweaked in the post production phase. It really is amazing.

This is the simple switcher that the director used to cut the show. The switcher is only cutting the composite standard def video. Each camera cut or dissolve shows up in an EDL matched up with timecode. Later, the guys in post can match it up with the high def video that was recorded separately onto the hard drives via CAT5. I am sure a few of my whip pans will have to be edited out for the final cut!

A few rack mounted Marshal LCD monitors serve as windows into the venue. These are camera preview monitors so that the director can see what the camera guy is shooting before he cuts the camera. The director gives his commands over the ClearCom intercom system that used one of the XLR cables in the loom camera cable.

Audio was also recorded to hard drives with timecode that matched up with the video hitting the hard drive array and the line cut webcast. Live Nation used a GENEX gx9048 box that had a virtual audio console that would take in each microphone on the stage as a separate channel. There was a real audio board, so the system is not fully virtual. Later in post, each channel could be worked with for the perfect mix. The audio guy working on this system just needs to make sure the levels are good and the sound is being recorded properly.

Each of these six one terabyte hard drives are removable and at the end of the show, they will be pulled and placed into a heavily padded Pelican case for shipment to the post facility in Los Angles, California.

I ran camera number four in the little camera pit between the packed in crowd and the stage. I kept my camera mostly on sticks and tried to pick off tight shots of Asher and his backup “singer”. The camera at the front of house only had the stock HVX-200 lenses and they just could not go tight enough. With me so close to stage and setup on a tripod, I was able to fill in the void and get the extreme close-ups.

If you have any questions about this production, please comment below.