Behind the Scenes of a live concert filming in New York City
The Setup
In 2021, we filmed a concert for a friend & client who I had known since 2018. His name is Christopher Zelno, and he was performing a live show that he had built, produced, and starred in. I was excited about the final video of that concert that we presented to him. And as it turns out - he was really happy about it too, because he asked us to come back to New York City 2 years later to film his follow up concert, called “Constant Craving” in September 2023. The 2023 concert capture is what I’ll be diving into in this post.
Traveling to New York City & our first obstacle
For this project, we traveled from our (new) home in southern Maine, to New York City in order to view the first night of the performance. And I’m so glad we went to view that first night. Not only was it a great time to be able to view the show as audience members, but upon our arrival, we discovered that the Green Room 42 had done an entire revamp since the last time we filmed there. The room looked totally different than it had in 2021, so our initial plan of how to capture the show went out the window.
During that opening night performance, we enjoyed a cup of coffee, sang along to a few songs, and conceptualized a new plan for the filming that was to happen at the closing nights performance.
Viewing the opening performance from the audience in order to make final plans of how best to capture the closing performance!
Concert Capture Breakdown
For the capture of the concert, we had a Director or Photography, 3 camera operators, and 5 total cameras on the show. Due to the nature of the Green Room 42 being a “dinner and a show” style venue, we decided to have all 5 cameras on tripods around the perimeter of the room, as to not interfere with food service and the experience of the show-goers. I decided to fill the role of Director of Photography, as well as Camera Operator of the 2 cameras in the back-center of the room. Taylor, who traveled with me from Maine, was operating 2 more cameras in the back corner of house right. And Eric, a local New York City camera operator, was operating a camera just off of stage-left. Sheridan, the in-house audio & lighting technician recorded and mixed the board audio to be used in our final video, and I also placed a few microphones around the room for capture of audience reactions, as well as the room tone to give the final mix a more “live” sound.
Two cameras getting set up, pre-show.
Post Production & Wrap
After all content was captured and I traveled back to my corner of New England, I began the editing process. Here, I chose the shots that portrayed the shows energy in the most true-to-life fashion, and cut those together. I want the viewer to feel the electricity that was in the room that night! I then mixed together Sheridan’s final board mix with my room microphones to give it a balanced, live feel & color matched all of the footage, for a seamless viewing experience.
I’m really happy with how the final video came out, and you can view select pieces of the full show here!
Client Review
If you’d like to read what Chris had to say about his experience, you can read his Google review of Wind Media Co here:
★★★★★
I adore Nate Wind. We have worked together on many , many projects now. Some produced by me, some produced by others. He's a great guy, and his work is without parallel.
The only glitchy thing is they in the past few years , Nate has relocated to Maine. So importing him to NYC does incur extra cost. Worth every penny. Anytime I got something big to do , Nate and his team are going with me.. He's my lucky charm.
A huge thank you to Chris for bringing us to New York to capture another incredible show! Whatever it is that he does next, Wind Media Co will always love to be a part of it.
