MUS IC | WA I T I NG FOR SMI TH
set-up, we shot about three to four takes. The track was about three minutes 50 seconds, so we were looking at around 48 minutes per take over the 12 cameras, hence my earlier data point. Thankfully, the fact we were shooting against black meant the amount of data wasn’t that large. We ended up shooting around 3TB for the whole project. Moving the cameras around became a bit of an issue; each HDMI to SDI converter needed power, the cameras needed power as they were on for so long... So, in among the seven tripods was a mains supply and BNC cables going back to the Blackmagic Multiview. However, Joseph and his assistants made this pretty much a non- event and, apart from the floor looking like spaghetti junction, we were able to reset shots in about half an hour. Five hours later, we were all done. I think we ended up with around 7.5 hours of material – something of a challenge for the editor, Eoin McDonagh in Dublin. I’m looking forward to seeing the final result. spinning the piano around and moving the camera into different positions I think we ended up doing five different set-ups,
ABOVE Part of the crew and the well-rigged Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema cameras
However, that wasn’t the end of the challenges. With Kevin wanting to shoot on ten cameras – now 12 – we also needed to monitor and record for playback. Joseph to the rescue again! The biggest challenge was going from HDMI to SDI using a converter for each camera, and then from that to a 50-inch Sony TV, where we could see all the cameras. This involved putting the camera feeds through a Blackmagic Multiview switcher, which then gave Kevin and myself a view of all the cameras at once. We also fed the images via an Atomos Shogun so we could record and playback the takes. The downside was that there was a slight delay with live and preview images, and not something we could sort with the budget as it stood. Aside from this was a DIT station where Joseph and his two assistants, Natasha Zund and Barry Jarmen, were able to download the CFast cards after each set-up. Kevin elected to do a number of 12-camera set-ups on the performance; I think we ended up doing five different set-ups, spinning the piano around and moving the cameras into different positions. Mounting the cameras was always going to be a thing. I decided to have five on a scaffold beam using K clamps to hold the camera and the other seven on tripods of various flavours with the odd
sandbag to get an unusual view, feet on peddles etc. LIGHT IT UP My next issue was how to light it. I was faced with a baby grand piano in a black space. We shot this in Studio 1 at Park Village, which is a fantastic central London Studio, giving adequate space to shoot TV commercials. Park Village Studio 1 is generally white, and painting the whole space black wasn’t really an option, so we used a number of black 12x12 foot drapes provided by Location Lighting. As the cameras were going to be in multiple positions, I decided to adopt a very simple lighting plan. Bernie Prentice, my gaffer, hung four S60 Arri Skypanels directly above the set and hung a 8x8 foot full grid cloth to soften even further. He then rigged a LiteMat 4 bicolour with a softbox to fill Harry’s face for close-ups. This was all controlled via Wi-Fi and, at full power, I had a stop of around T5.6. Once we had pre-lit, the piano was brought in and tuned. Of course we were running playback of the track, but it was important for Harry that he could play the piano for real. Having had an 8am call time, we were ready around 10am and turned over around 11am for the first set-up. On each
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