American Cinematographer - December 1984 - 96

who started his
went on to

career as an

work

as

a

editor and

cameraman

on

commercials, features and music vid¬
eos. "We used 1000' rolls, but some
cameras reloaded at 600, others at
900, so we could stagger the down¬
time and maximize the number of shots
I had to choose from."
In spite of the preparation,
this remained a live performance situa¬

tion, subject to the spontaneity that
makes a live show fun
and difficult to
direct. "We storyboarded the opening
-

sequence, because it was fairly elabo¬
rate and structured," said Lewis. "The
rest of the night we just made sure we
Robert Lumbard, Ken

Gladden, David
Lewis and Loren
Smith (I to r) during
the post-production

phase after the film
footage was
transferred to tape.

ated with

videotape production. "Essen¬
tially, we shot a film concert in a way
which would normally be considered a
videotape shoot," said Randy Gladden
of RandKen Postproduction Services,
who supervised a newly designed sys¬
tem for multiple camera film and audio
transfers to videotape. "We had proper
communications between all

seven cam¬

and the director, so he could see
and select his shots, and we developed
eras

film-to-tape trans¬
facilitate the editing. We
planned everything just like a tape
shoot, except we were shooting film."
a

rapid, high

accuracy

fer system to

The director,

David Lewis,

and production supervisor Loren Smith
attended Ronstadt concerts in San Fran¬

with a blueprint for
"Ideally, each camera
had eight minutes of film, so we made

cisco, and
the

Eric Leehandelaar

a
at

came up

camera

work.

checker-board breakdown of the

con¬

decide who would shoot what,

the communications

cert, to

system during the

plan out the reloading and make sure
we didn't miss anything," said Lewis,

production.

had coverage.

"Originally, I wanted 11

cam¬

which would have been more
relaxed, but we only had seven. And

eramen,

since this wasn't

a

series of concerts,

they couldn't study one before shooting.
They were kind of flying blind, which
was why I made sure all our camera¬
men were film D.Ps. It paid off. The
footage looked great and everything
went according to plan. In fact, we had
only one camera miss one time code
during a sound check on the second
day."
To guide those 'flying blind,'
Loren Smith developed a master book
that provided each camera team with an
individualized shooting script. "It was
something new for the camera teams to
deal with, but it provided all of us with
a common ground for communication,"
said Smith, whose credits include nu¬
merous commercials and documen¬

taries,

as

well

as more

than five years

writing, producing and directing at
KC0P-TV in Los Angeles.
After weeks of work, Smith
and Lewis created a highly detailed road

which contained the foundations of

map

the show. Said Smith, who also func¬
tioned as booth A.D.: "The master book
contained everything we needed to
know about the
ment

concert:

lyric and instru¬

breakdown, staging, and camera

schedules. This not only aided the direc¬
in the actual shooting of the show,
but also helped me organize the incredi¬

tor

ble amount of footage for post-produc¬
tion transfers and editing."
ule
era

first

A lot of this reloading
the window when

went out

sched¬
a cam¬

blew

a fuse three songs into the
night's show, lamented Lewis, who

has done music videos for Van Halen,

94

American

Cinematographer

December 1984

Sheena Easton, as well as earlier
Ronstadt material. "It was repaired
within ten minutes, but it threw our
board off. The

planning saved

our

necks, though, because we were so

organized, we were able to come up
with an improvised system that immedi¬
ately put us back to work."
When working on a concert
film, you learn to think on your feet and
make the most of a given situation, said
the director philosophically. "With a
music video, you've got more control. If
you don't like a take, you do it again.
One of the problems with filming a live
concert is that you're dealing with many
circumstances beyond your control.
"I'm not being judgmental,"
Lewis emphasized, "but things do go
wrong. If someone in the cellos doesn't
play the right note, you can't use that
shot. One

camera out.

You've got cam¬

reloading, they're out. At one
point, I had a lovely shot until the
drapes got stuck, so I had to go for
something else. Your options can disap¬
pear very quickly." Consequently, said
Lewis, "you're not only directing to cut.
You are also making sure that at the
end of the night, you've got a complete
eras

show."

Although much of the shoot
concert productions of the
past, what was unique was how

was

like

RandKen addressed its editorial. "All of
these pieces of equipment had been

working in the field, but this was the
first time anyone had used this configu¬
ration for this purpose before," said
Randy Gladden.
RandKen's assignment was
to outline a procedure to transfer both
film and audio to videotape; more im¬
portantly, it had to end up properly orga¬
nized according to SMPTE time coding.
In preparation, RandKen used an eight
week preproduction schedule putting the
pieces together, said RandKen partner
Ken Gladden. "This up-front time was
necessary because, rather than utilizing
existing systems, we opted to devise
customized ways to

solve production
problems."
According to Roger Reid of
Home Box Office, those systemic solu¬
tions worked very well indeed. "The
syncing process went remarkably well
in telecine," said Reid. "There
a

was not

single syncing problem out of 110,000

feet of film."
American Cinematographer - December 1984

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