cowper – The Kite Song – live at The Edge – 30th April 2010 from Jaymis on Vimeo.

cowper – Capulet – Live at The Edge – 30th April 2010 from Jaymis on Vimeo.

The shoot used three of the Edge’s little Sony HD cameras, and were operated by Kristy from 4ZZZ and other cool kids who happened to be in the Auditorium.

We’ve got quite an archive of performance footage building up, so if anyone would like to get some experience editing multi-camera shoots, you should get in touch with me.

The audio from this performance was recorded straight from the mixing desk to hard drive, and all four tracks can be downloaded for free from Cowper on Bandcamp.

Rowley and I have two Music+Visuals gigs coming up this weekend, first playing in one of The Edge’s window bays as part of the Unconvention lunchtime showcase on Saturday, then the Unconvention Afterparty at The JOYnt on Sunday immediately after Unconvention wraps up.

I’ll also be providing visuals for the Unconvention All Ages Showcase on Saturday night. Big weekend! Hope to see you there.

As an editor, one of the most common requests I get is “Can you edit the footage I shot at my show?” So last year I wrote a post on CreateDigitalMotion.com with some tips for artists documenting their shows:

Shooting Video For Gigs: Take That Camera Close and Make It Look Like Stuff Happened

I’m in the middle of editing a video that combines an artist interview with event footage. The supplied raw material is 10 minutes of interview footage and 45 minutes of the event, shot from a single camera. From that footage I was able to extract 5 minutes of usable interview, but just 40 seconds of the gig. It’s not that the gig video was badly shot, it was just homogenous. Medium-long shot of people dancing. Medium shot of the DJ. Over the shoulder shot of the DJ. Medium shot of girls dancing. Repeat.

This is sad, because a single camera and half an hour is plenty of time to capture a dynamic performance. The secret sauce? Close ups.

Segue – Reset (Live at Big Day Out) from Jaymis on Vimeo.
I shot this video for my friends/collaborators Segue at last year’s Big Day Out. Two days before the show, the festival organizers told us that we wouldn’t be able to do our own visuals for the set, so it was decided that I’d be camera guy instead, with an eye to getting footage for a live or studio video. I’m not much of a videographer – I keep forgetting whether clockwise zooms in or out – but I’ve spent a lot of time editing video, so I’m generally able to cover dodgy shooting with edits.

For that to work however, continuity needs to be maintained. In the above video, I’ve taken great care to ensure that continuity of action is held between cuts. If there’s a medium shot of an artist drinking water, or putting on his headphones, then the following closeup will show him putting down the bottle, or mixing with headphones in place. The footage may have been cut from 20 minutes earlier in the set, but because I got plenty of closeup footage, there’s no need for continuity to be kept across the entire stage, just on the detail that’s in focus.

This was a very time-consuming process, taking about 9 hours to turn 50 minutes of footage into a 7 minute edit. To show the band why it took so long and how I achieved the final result, I created a two-up video, which displays the final edit on top, and the live camera feed below. I’d previously kept this edit private, to maintain the mystery for the band, but I think it’s worth revealing to show what’s possible if you give yourself plenty of shot variation to play with:

Segue – Reset (Live at BDO Two-up Edit) from Jaymis on Vimeo.

Obviously the setting really helps here – thousands of kids jumping around can’t help but be exciting – but even if the source footage isn’t epic, with your non-linear editor and enough closeups, you can make it look that way.

4–6pm Saturday 13 March 2010
Who: The Edge’s new Catalysts
What: quite a lot of showing off
Cost: FREE

Ride on down to The Edge this Saturday afternoon for the first ever Show Pony—The Edge’s own creative mash up.

Check out some of the weird and wonderful things our Catalysts have been up to over the last couple of weeks and find out how you can help them take over The Edge.

There’ll be live music by Catalyst Ian Rogers (AKA Ambrose Chapel), a showcase of participants from Musicadium’s upcoming workshops, as well as the debut performance by Hologram Carver (AKA Catalyst Andrew Gibbs).

Live visuals will be produced by Catalyst and Createdigitalmotion.com co-founder Jaymis Loveday including footage from The Edge Opening Event.

Catalysts Sandra Landolt (sculptor) and Stephen Stockwell (journo) will also be around if you have any questions about upcoming workshops at The Edge.

Kick back with a coffee and a muffin and see what The Edge Crewis up to (sign up for an Edge account first to get 10% off your coffee). This will also be a great time to sign up for free workshops (learn everything from cardboard engineering to music software) and check out the space.

This is a particularly timely piece of repurposing though, with the triumphant Edge Launch last Friday night, and loud, shouty bands like DZ playing, I was a little concerned that we weren’t providing hearing protection. Not that this is necessarily the responsibility of the venue, but I think it’s something that caring Places Of Noise should do, and I’ll be talking to our staff about getting a supply of cheap disposable ‘plugs for patrons of our shows.

If, however, you’re someone who sees a lot of gigs, cares about how those gigs sound, or who cares about not disposing of things which don’t necessarily need to be thrown away, then you should invest in a slightly more permanent solution. Enter the Etymotics ER-20 High Fidelity earplugs.

As a VJ and live performer, I’ve spent lots of time on stages and in clubs, and always worn hearing protection. Usually the disposable foam ones. They protect your ears well, but provide an uneven attenuation of sound, removing too much high-end. In non-audio-geek terms, this makes the music sound muffled, like it’s coming from the next room, or it’s being played through some speakers which are buried in blankets.

Higher quality earplugs have a more even attenuation, which makes the waves delivered to your ears sound much more natural. I’ve actually found that using them makes loud gigs sound even better than barebacking. When exposed to a loud sound, your stapedius reflex slightly closes your inner ear. This makes things sound different, and it’s why your hearing is muffled after a loud show, but it’s not enough to protect you from permanent hearing damage.

The ER-20s aren’t quite as comfortable as the soft, squishy ones, but the better sound more than makes up for this, and it protects the world from soft, squishy landfill. I actually had a hearing test done on Tuesday morning, less than 12 hours after seeing Phoenix at the Entertainment Centre. It was an extremely loud gig, yet my test results were all well within the normal range.

So. Hearing protection = compulsory. Higher quality hearing protection = lovely. If you’d like to know more on the subject, my original post on CreateDigitalMusic has loads of comments from musicians and performers around the world, both heaping love on Good Earplugs, and lamenting the fact that they didn’t know about them until Too Late.

If you’d like to get some of your own, you can order them for AU$35 (inc. delivery) from Headphonic in Australia.