doubleJ Productions

I did camera ops for a Tom Lovato & Friends concert for this year’s military gala at the Chateau On The Lake convention center. There were two music sets, a lot of dancing, a great meal, and a military ceremony. There was A LOT of alcohol. Hehehe…

I had a total of 9 cameras. I had a static wide shot, a static on the keyboard/bass, another static shot on the electric guitar, and a static shot on the sax. I had a cool (hopefully) static drum shot, from above. I followed with tight shots for the lead vocal and solo instruments and handheld b-roll (mostly dancing), when I wasn’t following.

I was planning to get a mix from the front-of-house board, but it wasn’t going to be a very good mix (not because he’s not good, but because a FOH mix isn’t good for recording). I ended up multi-tracking on my laptop, which means I’m going to have to reproduce the entire show’s audio.

Between the sets, during the meal and ceremony, I had to offload the first set’s footage and charge batteries. Even with that, one camera ran out of storage and another ran out of battery. A second camera had minutes left on the second card, because I forgot to format the backup card after moving the footage.

Overall, it was a really fun night. It ended up being a really long day (1:00 PM setup to 11:15PM teardown), but I had a blast. There was good music and it’s fun watching old people get jiggy. One guy kept moving his girl’s hands down to his butt. Another guy was wearing a military jacket over his kilt. There was a guy with a robotic wheelchair that raised him up to standing height, so he could dance with his lady. That’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

Now, I have to start the arduous task of editing.