Noisefest 2015 has come and gone, and it just seems like yesterday I was running around between Cafe Colonial and The Colony between sets.
When I wasn’t running between two venue spots for performance photos, I had duties to complete as part of perk fulfillment for the Norcal Noisefest Indiegogo campaign. With the generosity of Uberkunst and Small Drone Orchestra, we were able to help exceed our funding goal and I was happy to return the favor with my established perk.
For these projects, I had used 2 Sony NEX VG30, one with a standard 200mm lens and the other with a 18mm wide angle lens.
The option I had for the funders was a two-camera setup – one stationary and the other on Glidecam, and then use audio from the external recorder pulling from the mixer. My plan was to have a fairly compact setup, and it worked out fairly well.
Saturday night’s show closed with a much-anticipated Uberkunst set. I’m familiar with their wild and sometimes fluid-riddled performances, so I made sure to set up the stationary camera away from the “splash zone” that their demonic totem would produce.
Andrew Wayne of Chopstick had lent his hand to be on stationary camera, asking only to do easy pans and zooms when necessary. We’ve worked well together in the past and know how to keep and eye out for each other’s queues. However, our excellent teamwork couldn’t save the stationary camera from getting blasted with a shot of a creamy white substance….. liquid hand soap. He moved the camera as quickly as he could behind some human shields in the audience while I tried my best to not slip in fake blood and…. liquid hand soap… that was quickly pooling on the floor. My only regret is not thinking of brining my LED lamp to mount for the mobile camera shoe.
It was quite a wild time and they didn’t disappoint!
Uberkunst
This video has been marked for mature audiences.
Sunday late afternoon had Small Drone Orchestra with a mellow drone set. For this I had taken a different approach to better emphasize the feel of his music. I enlisted the help of Andrew Wayne again, but not a lot of moving around (or dodging fake blood for that matter) from either of us, but slow trucking for mobile and slow pans/tilts and zooms from stationary. Most of the achievement came in post production, where I did a lot of slow fades between composited clips to obtain a more spiritual, ethereal visual to his performance.
Needless to say, SDO left the audience mesmerized.
Small Drone Orchestra