Rather suprised how I didn’t get distracted by the noise. Good audio makes it worthwhile, which was a mix of board feed and stereo room audio recorded on a Zooom H4N in 4CH mode. I did up the mids, brights, and a little saturation. Overall I’m pretty impressed. What do you think?

Our documentary, Welcome to Daytrotter has a long time to go before its screening but we’re posting moments called Raw Footage that inspire us to continue filming and editing. We caught Local Natives in studio playing a catchy and cinematic song Wide Eyes. Again Dan Welk and I caught it all on Canon DSLRs and Lisa caught the sound in the room on the H4N. I synced it with Plualeyes and edited in Final Cut.  No color correction or audio sweetening. Honestly its hard to tell the difference between what we got and the recording that is posted on daytrotter here. Both are beautiful and elegant.

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Click! Photography

Ben Godar

Lisa Edwards

This is a big announcement for me. It’s a project that has been in the works for a long time. May I introduce “Welcome to Daytrotter” a kickass documentary that I’m helping shoot and edit. Here’s the description from our website

Welcome to Daytrotter is a documentary film about the people behind the music blog and recording studio Daytrotter.  Since opening its doors in 2006, more than 1000 sessions have been recorded in the little studio in Rock Island, Il and given away for free.

The roster of artists is impressive, from Death Cab for Cutie and Spoon, to legends like Kris Kristoffersen, to many bands out on the road to make a name for themselves.  The story of how a dedicated group of people took an idea and built it into one of the most important tastemakers in indie rock is even more impressive.

This feature documentary is currently on-schedule to premiere sometime in early 2012.  It is being shot entirely in 1080p HD with Canon DSLR cameras.

Connect with us online and through social media to stay informed on the progress of the film, and please consider making a tax-deductible donation to help us tell the story.  You can also help us show there is an audience for the film by liking us on Facebook.

The last part is real important, this is a film we’ve been paying out of our pockets for. We could really use any donations and there are some sweet thank you gifts that you could recieve.

Expect to see plenty of updates on the making of the film and all the nerdy tech stuff you expect from me.

A web friend and band publicist, Patrice Fehlen from September Gurl, talked to me awhile ago about shooting a video for the elegant Eliza Blue. I checked out her website and saw these opulent promo pics and then heard her polished cinematic album and worried Patrice might not have called the right guy. I mentioned to Eliza before we met up that I wanted to add a bit more rough edges to her persona and she easily agreed. What was most important to me was to bring a live feel to the video. So many videos are just a band playing a song in park, or train station or old building but I wanted to still stretch from this played out motif and add back in some music video elements in a short time period.

I brought Dan Welk along again and we met up in an old warehouse where I used to work. We attempted to get to the roof but it actually was rather boring (and I might add dangerous) and we crawled back down to the top floor. There we saw this odd door frame leaning up next to a window and I just thought that was great. We found a few chairs and we’re ready.

Again I was operating my T2i with Dan’s 70-200mm 4.0 and Dan used a 18-70 on his 5D2. We had a hidden wireless on Eliza and a second mic pointed at the percussionist off the frame. Both plugged into a H4N. We ended up recording the song three times getting six different angles. I originally thought I would only use one take to edit to but eliza played each so well and all the angles worked well to mix into. Since we still had some time we walked down to some train tracks by the river and  starting shooting for the hell of it. I didn’t know if anything we shot would make sense but I was excited to get some fun shots and just maybe it would make its way in. Luckily we had the hour of power in our favor and we quickly came up with a list of shots and got them fairly quickly and easily.

In the edit, I synced the live shots with Pluraleyes and got some film burns loaded. The edit came easily and it almost seemed like there was a little story in the music video elements. Enough to seem coherent, but lots of mystery and hopefully not too pretentious. Really loving this camera, can’t wait to get some nice glass on it and see it really shine. Let me know what you think.

This is my start into the DSLR revolution. I recently acquired a Canon T2i and wanted to try it out. I called up by friend Dan Welk who has a Canon 5D mark ii and we headed to the PCC album release show. Both cameras have amazing depth of field, rich color, and low contrast settings, which all evoke a film feel. I’ve been following the DSLR movement religiously but have only recently been able to dive in. And dive I will. Look for lots more footage up here soon as well as all the content I have planned for the site. Got lots of shoots planned in the next few months so I’m excited to use this little guy.

Tech: This was shot with a 5D2 and T2i. The 5D2 had a Rode video mic on it. The audio is a mix of a board feed recorded on a Zooom H4N and a bit of the 5D camera audio. The three sources (2 video + 1 audio) were synced by Pluraleyes (which tried real hard) and edited in FCP with minor color correction. My T2i struggled a bit in the low light so I bumped up the mids in post a bit and desaturated it. The T2i image has quite a bit less latitude in it compared to the 5D2. There is a bit of distortion from the board at the beginning and the crowd had no inhibitions about bumping into us so it gets jumpy from time to time. This was a great test of these new cameras.

Linkage:

Dan Welk

Canon T2i

Poison Control Center

Pluraleyes

I shot, edited, and directed this no-budget music video for the Poison Control Center’s single “Being Gone” off their new 2nd full length, “SAD SOUR FUTURE.”  The video was shot in the band’s home digs of Ames, IA  on sunny Sunday afternoon with a Sony HVRV1U. ”SAD SOUR FUTURE” will be released on Afternoon Records May 18th 2010!

Linkage:

Poison Control Center

Afternoon Records