2022-07.08 Beach House @ The National (Richmond, VA) | [FULL SET]

iRCHVST 0027: Beach House @ The National (Richmond, VA)

Beach House URL: http://www.beachhousebaltimore.com/
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Beach House on Bandcamp: https://beachhouse.bandcamp.com/
Beach House wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_H...

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I arrived an hour and a half earlier with my friend and were surprised by the long line of people who were already waiting! We guessed they arrived 5 p.m. or earlier. I was impressed by their dedication, but man, I was now scrambling to find an optimal shooting location for this video!

I tried the front but was behind folks who got to the rail. They were unfortunately taller than me and shooting between people would not make for a decent video. That's when I decided to shoot from the back after checking views on my phone.

I shot this at a location I should have done with Soccer Mommy and Peel Dream Magazine (my first two videos). Behind the soundboard are three enclosed areas raised above the general audience. The one to the far left was reserved for handicap access, the one in the middle was behind the soundboard and the section where I was had a good view of the stage with audience to capture mood/interaction. I thought about shooting behind the soundboard but there were two cables flanking the section which rose to the ceiling and I was afraid it would get in my view.

I'm going to apologize for the subtle "camera drift" throughout the video. It's not bad at all, but you do notice it. This happened because of two things: my neighbor and the darkness between songs.

My neighbor was dancing away (which I'm 100% cool with) but he was holding on to the rail while doing so. When I put my weight against it to lock my camera view, I'd notice my body slightly moving, too! My adjustments to his dancing are captured by the drifts you see in the video.

The second reason was my disorientation and readjusting between songs. In between a couple songs, the stage went black and I'd point my camera towards where I thought the band was. When the lights came back on, I re-adjusted. With fan-shot videos, these are unexpected conditions you have to deal with.

I shot with the camera's telephoto lens and large Shure mic. Kudos to the sound person for doing a great job. The combination of great theater acoustics and a competent sound person made the audio recording a dream to work with. I barely had to do anything with it.

My one audio gripe could also be seen as a positive for how sensitive my external mic is to picking up ALL sounds. In my section, there were people behind talking during a majority of Beach House's set. I didn't think much of it at first, but when those folks didn't stop, I thought, "Who the hell converses throughout the duration of a sold-out concert?" Baffling, if you ask me... If you listen closely, that's them.

In my camera view, I opened the 3x3 grid and tried to keep the audience in the bottom third, the band in the second third with the back drop at top. This worked well when camera views of each band member were projected behind. While shooting, my goal was to keep Victoria in the center grid box at all times to keep everything in perspective.

The band played bathed by their light and projection shows in the backdrop. Their silhouettes against this looked amazing in person and on video. My iPhone did a decent job of staying in focus during the whole set compared to older videos where this was a challenge to the phone/camera app.

Victoria's wittiness came into play at 18:51; I was happy to have captured that. It gave me a good chuckle.

For this venue, I'll probably pack my pistol grip attachment so I can maintain steadier shots just in case I switch from front to back positions in the audience. Also, after publishing this video, I discovered a video filter that reduces shakiness in my production software. Doh!

I've always mentioned this, but "warts and all," this is what's captured from a fan-shot perspective by a person still learning the videography ropes! Either way, hope you enjoyed this recording.