MarkBarbieri
Semi-retired
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2006
- Messages
- 6,172
My younger son had his fourth grade play last week. As usual, he didn't try out for a part. He was in the chorus.
My wife and I help out with the school plays every year. She works on the sets and costumes. We work together to shoot the plays. I do the post production work. We've been doing this for a few years now and have a pretty good routine down.
You can see the play here.
Here are some tips if you want to do a similar shoot.
First, audio is critical. If the production uses microphones, that's what you want to use for your audio. In the past, we used a field audio recorder (like a Zoom H4N) connected to the output from the mixer board. That worked well, with one exception. During the songs, the sound of the music was too loud relative to the sound of the kids singing. It was usable (and light years better than recording it from the audience), but not ideal.
Last year, we switched to using a Zoom R16, which can record 8 tracks at once. We split the mics and send their outputs to both the mixer board and the R16. It's a lot more complicated, but it gives me a lot more control over the audio because I can mix the tracks in post production.
For video, you'll want at least to cameras. We set up one camera as a "stage" camera. It records a continuous wide shot of the stage. My wife and I each use another camera that we control throughout the show. When we don't have a good shot on the cameras we are controlling, we fall back to the stage camera.
For the stage camera, you can use just about any stable tripod and head. For the "controlled" cameras, you'll want a more stable tripod and a video head so that you can do smooth pans. When you pan, pan slowly...painfully slowly. What seems like a reasonable pace when you are filming is too fast.
We use the Adobe Creative Suite (Premiere, Encore, Audition, Photoshop, and sometimes After Effects) for our post production work. There are a lot of good suites out there, but this is the one I'm most familiar with. You want something that lets you edit/mix the audio, edit the video, and build a Blu-ray/DVD.
I also use PluralEyes to help sync up the various audio and video sources. That can be a big time saver if you have lots of independent recording devices.
It might not be worth the effort to make a Blu-ray version. We live in a relatively affluent area and only about 10% of our sales are Blu-rays. I keep expecting it to change, but Blu-ray sales have hardly increased since we started them. The school charges $10/DVD and $15/Blu-ray.
If anyone is interested in trying this and wants more help, let me know. It's not as complicated as it sounds, but then again, it isn't trivial either. The teachers and the parents love it. Our only problem now is our exit strategy. I don't think I want to keep doing this after my kids move on to other schools, but I haven't found anyone else interested in picking up the job.
My wife and I help out with the school plays every year. She works on the sets and costumes. We work together to shoot the plays. I do the post production work. We've been doing this for a few years now and have a pretty good routine down.
You can see the play here.
Here are some tips if you want to do a similar shoot.
First, audio is critical. If the production uses microphones, that's what you want to use for your audio. In the past, we used a field audio recorder (like a Zoom H4N) connected to the output from the mixer board. That worked well, with one exception. During the songs, the sound of the music was too loud relative to the sound of the kids singing. It was usable (and light years better than recording it from the audience), but not ideal.
Last year, we switched to using a Zoom R16, which can record 8 tracks at once. We split the mics and send their outputs to both the mixer board and the R16. It's a lot more complicated, but it gives me a lot more control over the audio because I can mix the tracks in post production.
For video, you'll want at least to cameras. We set up one camera as a "stage" camera. It records a continuous wide shot of the stage. My wife and I each use another camera that we control throughout the show. When we don't have a good shot on the cameras we are controlling, we fall back to the stage camera.
For the stage camera, you can use just about any stable tripod and head. For the "controlled" cameras, you'll want a more stable tripod and a video head so that you can do smooth pans. When you pan, pan slowly...painfully slowly. What seems like a reasonable pace when you are filming is too fast.
We use the Adobe Creative Suite (Premiere, Encore, Audition, Photoshop, and sometimes After Effects) for our post production work. There are a lot of good suites out there, but this is the one I'm most familiar with. You want something that lets you edit/mix the audio, edit the video, and build a Blu-ray/DVD.
I also use PluralEyes to help sync up the various audio and video sources. That can be a big time saver if you have lots of independent recording devices.
It might not be worth the effort to make a Blu-ray version. We live in a relatively affluent area and only about 10% of our sales are Blu-rays. I keep expecting it to change, but Blu-ray sales have hardly increased since we started them. The school charges $10/DVD and $15/Blu-ray.
If anyone is interested in trying this and wants more help, let me know. It's not as complicated as it sounds, but then again, it isn't trivial either. The teachers and the parents love it. Our only problem now is our exit strategy. I don't think I want to keep doing this after my kids move on to other schools, but I haven't found anyone else interested in picking up the job.
