This article which originally appeared in the IAC magazine Film and Video Maker was written by Ian Morris -a long standing club member. Ian presented this video with an explanation at Finchley on November 6th.

The article describes the making of the video and that may be viewed on YouTube. The link to the video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhT6ujaNvOU Alternatively, in the ‘search' window in You Tube, simply type ‘ Barnet Band RAF' and the video will load up and run.

I have always admired those professional concert videos which present, at a great pace, a far greater variety of angles than would be possible by strategically placing four or even five cameras around the orchestra or band. My curiosity into how these have been achieved normally leads to approximately the same answer.

An expert (but limited in number) team of camera operators, managed by a very creative director, attends the dress rehearsals, and several identical performances of the same pieces, often stretching over several days. Angles not covered by the team in the first run through are then set up and covered in a later performance.

The cameras are time-code synchronised for later precise line up on the timeline. The multi-track timeline is then populated with a fantastic variety of shots for the director working in tandem with an experienced editor. Top end NLE (non linear editing) systems, such as Avid Media Composer or Final Cut Pro, allow the required pace and variety of shots to be developed into a compelling video.

A great example is Martin Scorcese's tribute to The Rolling Stones ‘Shine a Light' made a few years ago.

Having to eliminate (for the foreseeable future at least!) dreams of a professional camera crew, a broadcast quality AVID editing suite, and terabytes of RAID storage, I was faced, on midsummer's day in June 2009, with a serious challenge – how to create a compelling video recording of that famous war movie theme ‘The Dam Busters' March' from a live performance at North London's Royal Air Force Museum inn Hendon – delivered with gusto by Barnet Band.

My equipment – two very capable mini DV cameras (Sony VX2000E and Sony HC-7), two professional tripods (Vinten and Sony), a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder, and finally - one cameraman – myself!

The band had already prepared its programme, and agreed it with the host museum months before I thought of making the movie.

The single greatest challenge was that the Dam Busters' March would be played through only once, as the finale of two 45-minute sets that afternoon. With just one cameraman how could I achieve – on screen – the effect of a multi-camera shoot?

The realisation of how to ‘deliver' the video then came to me. I would compile my multi-angle shots whilst the band performed other pieces in the first set, and the first part of the second set. I would then capture some very precise synchronised shots for the March itself – especially the conductor, percussion, and key brass players.

Before any readers consider embarking on this approach, rather than enlisting a small team of second or third cameramen to cover various angles, I think it is only fair to issue ‘health warning'!

In order to capture a variety of well composed, correctly exposed and focused shots, a lot of moving around the band was necessary. This was particularly challenging as the band had been very picturesquely located under the wings and body of an impressive decommissioned Lancaster bomber – the very same aircraft type as used in the Dam Buster raids during the war.. Therefore there were some big distances to cover especially when shooting from the sides and behind the aircraft, when the Vinten tripod's precise levelling pan/tilt head, and the VX2000's long zoom, came in particularly handy.

Being reasonable fit, and also being very familiar with the VX2000's controls, I had the opportunity to include many angles both near and far, and deal almost shot by shot with the highly variable (and poor) lighting I was presented with. A bonus of being the sole cameraman is that – look as you may at the video – there is never another cameraman in sight!

For the Dam Busters'March performance itself, I set up the second camera (the Sony HC-7 fitted with a Canon 0.7x wide angle adaptor) on a tripod just behind, and above, the percussion set. This provided a very good view of the percussion in the foreground, and the remainder of the band in the background. It also provided an exactly synchronised ‘master shot' for both picture and sound – and of course every cymbal crash is precise to the frame! The camera was firmly locked off on the tripod, and its focus and exposure were set and locked in manual. Therefore once running, I did not need to check it, and could concentrate on capturing shots on my ‘roving' principal camera.

The main ‘front of orchestra' audio was recorded in stereo in high quality mp3 on the Zoom H2 audio recorder – a device I would highly recommend . Its recording would later be mixed – on the timeline – with the second camera's percussion recording.

I am a long established, and generally satisfied, Premiere Pro user, which I run on a custom built PC. It does a competent job and runs pretty efficiently and responsively, particularly since I recently upgraded the RAM from 2gb to 4gb, another ‘highly recommended' tip!

One protocol I learnt many years ago (when I was editing Finchley Film Makers' 16mm drama ‘Change of Heart) is the importance of shot by shot logging. This way I know where each shot is located, and each has a clear name for quick access.

Premiere Pro (and I believe other professional standard NLE's) allows the creation of ‘bins' in the assets window – this being adopted form the days of film editing when the individual takes were actually hung in named bins in the editing room. I created such a series of bins before capturing began – with such names a ‘conductor', clarinets', ‘flutes' etc.

Using the Batch Capturing facility, I then captured and named usable takes directly into the relevant bin. This has always been a lengthy (and largely administrative) process – whether for film or video. However, in my experience, it pays off once the creative editing process begin – as all the usable takes can be quickly located and dropped onto the timeline for trimming to the length required.

To avoid the risk of the principal roving camera being in its ‘off' setting when I located a new angle, I had adopted a standard of running the camera continuously throughout a piece of music. This meant that nearly half the tape was unusable whilst camera was moved, framed, focused, or its exposure fixed. I excluded these unusable ‘NG' i.e. no good shots at the capture stage – and this eliminated the need to deal with them on the timeline itself.

The first two critical tracks I set up were the Zoom H2 digital audio track, and the second camera's percussion video and synchronised audio track. Thanks to several very clear cymbal clashes near the beginning of the March, I had a ‘virtual clapper board' allowing frame-accurate synch of the two audio tracks. The volume of the ‘percussion' track was the reduced by around 12db to avoid it dominating the whole band's sound.

As both the digital recorder's and second camera's microphones were placed relatively near the musicians, the sound initially came across as if recorded in a ‘dead' studio setting. By adding ‘large hall reverberation' to both tracks, the sound as heard by the audience in the large museum hall was simulated on the video soundtrack. This sound processing facility is another feature of Premiere Pro I appreciate.

With the second camera's wide-angle shot of the percussion and orchestra now running the full length of the timeline, the editing process was ready for selecting the wide variety of conductor, instrument, and other cutaway shots located in their bins. In many cases it was necessary to adjust the in and out points by just a few frames either way to synchronise exactly with the music.

The ‘slip tool' facility on Premiere Pro (which I believe is adopted from similar tools on Avid and Final Cut Pro) makes this operation both precise and a pleasure to use. An example is where there is a medium close up of a flautist, filmed during an earlier piece of music. I was able to adjust the last six frames to show her looking up from her flute to screen left.

We then cut to the conductor, looking screen right, and a smooth transition is made, in synch with the music, across two shots filmed hours apart! The same ‘slip' tool also allowed precise matching of the conductor's raising and lowering his baton, on shots taken from different angles during different pieces of music.

CREDIT TITLES

The opening and closing credit titles are filmed against a backdrop of two Spitfire aircraft located in the exterior grounds of the RAF museum. Filmed several weeks after the concert, I chose a day when there was both sunshine and cloud, allowing me to speed up the cloud movement behind the aircraft to add some animation to these brief sections of the film. Naturally they were filmed on a tripod to assure absolute stability for placement of the superimposed titles from Premiere Pro.

UPLOADING THE VIDEO TO ‘YOU TUBE'

I am in regular contact with some very experienced video makers who shoot and edit far more than I do given my current rather time consuming full time job! They have had their experiences, good and bad, with the image quality of videos uploaded to You Tube. Talking with Tom Hardwick, a regular visitor to FFM, I concluded that I would use the MPEG-2 codec for this video – this is one of the options recommended by You Tube. This can be run straight off the Premiere Pro timeline, using the on-board Canopus Media Encoder on my computer. I used a VBR (Variable Bit Rate) setting of minimum 4 mb/sec, maximum 6 mb/sec – this created a file 125mb in size for the 5 minute video.

The upload of the MPEG-2 video to You Tube took just under one hour, and took around another hour to ‘render' on their server before it was viewable on line. I am very satisfied indeed with both the picture and sound being delivered on You Tube, and indeed it played as perfectly off a relative's i-phone in a remote part of Hungary this summer as it does off my PC at home!