harshbarge

NYC Winter Jazzfest: The Video Adventure Continues

Mito — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:31:19 +0000

So many knobs and buttons! I went up to New York again for Winter Jazzfest to try out our new live switcher at (Le) Poisson Rouge, a venue in the West Village that NPR Music has begun a relationship with. Basically we’ll be installing all this new gear to set the place up for live-streaming video, so whenever a band or artist comes through who we want to feature, we can broadcast the concert.

This is all a work in progress, and I’m hoping to get to a point where if it was a big deal show we could bring in a couple videographers to operate cameras up on stage, but for now we’ve just got a couple of remote-controlled cameras fixed to the ceiling, and a camera on a tripod on stage. Obviously the cameras that are closer look nicer, but the remote control pan-tilt-zoom cams let you do the whole thing as a one man operation, while still getting a variety of shots.

This show was a bit of a challenge, since I was doing the video by myself, so I had to keep fighting my way through the crowd to get to the stage to re-adjust the stationary camera, and come back to the switcher to direct (“camera 1, camera 2″ etc.) I still don’t know what half those buttons do, but hopefully I’ll figure it out soon!

Field Recordings: David Wax Museum

St. Vincent, Live at 9:30 Club

Rachel & Jacob Getting Married

Field Recordings: David Wax Museum

Mito — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 06:56:14 +0000

Over the last few months I’ve been working on a new video series for NPR Music called “Field Recordings”. The videos in the series are a bit varied, because they all sort of started as different projects and ended up grouped as performances that take place in strange places outside of NPR (to differentiate from the Tiny Desk or Studio 4A sessions.) We’ve finally gotten around to releasing them, and the first to be promoted is David Wax Museum.

This video and a few others we shot in the ruins of Fort Adams during the Newport Folk and Newport Jazz Festival weekends are the dearest to my heart, because they began as my pet project, when I finagled some time out of my regular festival duties to shoot some spontaneous “rogue” video. With the help of my colleagues, most notably Mike Katzif at Folk Fest and Patrick Jarenwattananon during Jazz Fest, we wrangled some stellar musicians who were game to tromp through weeds and broken glass to get to this awesomely decrepit part of the old fort, just outside Festival boundaries. Rockstar audio engineer Kevin Wait hooked us up with the fluffy shotgun mic and recorder, and fixed up all the sound in post.

For this shoot, the band was incredibly gracious and obliged us to play the song three times through, so with only two cameras, including Mike as second shooter with his shaky broken arm, we were able to get enough decent footage to stitch something together. It took a while for NPR to find a place for these little orphan videos, but the “Field Recordings” umbrella really fits well.

I’d like to do more shoots like this one, that feel energetic and spontaneous and kind of secret and magical. The obvious influence is Vincent Moon and his “Take Away Show” videos for La Blogothèque, but with more than one camera angle. I like the intimacy of Moon’s stuff, so I’ll use him as a starting point as I figure out what I’m doing with this thing, and what my own video style will become.

Folk Yeah! Weekend #1 At Newport Fest.

St. Vincent, Live at 9:30 Club

Rachel & Jacob Getting Married

Rachel & Jacob Getting Married: Video & Photos

Mito — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:45:12 +0000

I was asked to photograph my colleague Jacob’s wedding to his fiance Rachel, in Roxbury, a few hours upstate from NYC. This was the first wedding I’ve ever shot, and of course I decided to be insane and simultaneously attempt to make a wedding video. Often this meant balancing the video cam in my left hand as I took photos with my right, which is why so much of the footage is shaky. The wedding was wet, but delightful, and everybody seemed to have a good time. Hopefully I managed to capture some of that.

The songs I chose from the actual playlist at the wedding. The Yo La Tengo song actually played during the ceremony as Jacob approached the chuppa, and Jacob and Rachel did in fact have their first dance to the Otis Redding song. And I’m not sure if this works, but at the very end I transition the R.Kelly song on the soundtrack to the actual audio of that song playing on site. I also tried something goofy and made a mashup of the traditional Jewish song from the indoor ceremony with Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby” because they weirdly lined up almost perfectly.

I think if I ever do this in the future I’ll come more prepared to do video, with proper audio recording equipment, and perhaps not attempt to take photos at the same time. The photos themselves were a bit of a challenge, because the ceremony took place just before sundown, it was drizzling rain, and much of it was inside with very low light. I took a ton of photos, all of which you can see HERE, but here are a handful of my favorites:

The Adventures of The Walking Box: Marriage Proposal/Ode to Chicago ♡

Echo. Echo. Echo. Echo. An Experiment In Sound.

IT’S PUMPKIN TIIIIIME!

St. Vincent, Live at 9:30 Club

Mito — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 23:09:15 +0000

All images ©NPR.

Had another go at live-loading photos to go along with NPR Music’s live-stream of a St. Vincent concert at 9:30 Club in DC. Same deal: up front to take photos for the first 3 songs, then hustle up to the crow’s nest to dump and upload to Flickr. The show was great, that woman can SHRED.

Also, this job totally doesn’t suck.

Zola Jesus: Adventures In Live-Streaming Video

Sasquatch Fest

Bon Iver, Live.

Zola Jesus: Adventures In Live-Streaming Video

Mito — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:30:35 +0000

Over the last month or so I’ve been doing a lot of research on live video streaming to come up with a decent setup for NPR Music. We’re developing a relationship with (Le) Poisson Rouge in the West Village, and will probably be live-streaming a lot of their genre-diverse shows.

I went up to New York during CMJ Fest to implement the first trial of our live video adventure with Zola Jesus, which I was so stoked about because hers is one of only a handful of bands/projects I’ve been introduced to in the last couple of years that I’ve gotten really excited about, and I’d never seen her live. She totally delivered, and if you only watch one song watch “Vessel” about 20 minutes in, especially when she goes bonkers at the end. And the encore of “Run Me Out” gave me chillllls.

All images ©NPR.

I was able to get the vendor I’ve been meeting with to lend us a Sony HXR-NX5U camcorder, and a Panasonic AW-HE50S remote-controlled camera, that looks kind of like a security camera dome. I stuck the Sony on a tripod at the edge of the stage (which got all those sharp profile shots), used an older Canon they had in-house for the steady wide shot, and then mounted the Panasonic to the ceiling and remote-controlled it to get the rest of the shots. I took photos for the first couple of songs and then ran up to the switcher to take over directing from Le Poisson Rouge’s Doron Schächter. I fumbled a little bit at first, but the whole thing was really intuitive and easy to use.

Considering the whole show was in crazy low light, I think the video came out nicely. The color is off, but I think this might have a little more to do with the in-house encoder at the venue than what was coming out of our switcher, which looked better than this. Ideally we could have two camera operators up front so we wouldn’t have to rely so much on the security cam for variety of shots, but for a one-man show this setup is pretty decent.

I edited the show down to about half its original length, but the entire audio stream is up on the NPR Music page.

Oh, and weirdly, it turns out their tour manager/record label honcho is none other than my friend from Chicago, Taylor. SMALL FUCKING WORLD DUDES.

< From Billboard.biz

Bon Iver, Live.

Mito — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:51:08 +0000

I’ve been working a lot more with NPR Music lately, and one of the perks of this gig is being able to see and shoot some great shows. Bon Iver came through DC recently, and NPR Music presented a live audio stream of the concert. I tagged along to live-load photos to go along with it.

All images ©NPR.

I had the first three songs to shoot from the photo pit up front, and then I ran my camera back to my laptop where I uploaded photos a couple at a time to the All Songs Considered Flickr. The Flickr feed then fed a constantly-updating gallery on the NPR page, so people visiting the site could see new photos as I uploaded them. (It’s an interesting way to do it, though there are a whole slew of issues with using Flickr, namely that apparently Getty Images then has the right to distro your photos as they please.)

It was definitely a rush shooting, editing and uploading as fast as possible, I imagine it’s similar to what sports shooters do during halftime, though I’ll never know because I happily managed to go through an entire grad program at one of the biggest football schools in the midwest without having to shoot a single sports event (thanks to my assigning editor/roommate Michelle Peltier).

P.S. The show was amazing, I highly suggest you listen to the archived audio.

Zola Jesus: Adventures In Live-Streaming Video

Folk Yeah! Weekend #1 At Newport Fest.

The Adventures of The Walking Box: Marriage Proposal/Ode to Chicago ♡

Folk Yeah! Weekend #1 At Newport Fest.

Mito — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:24:57 +0000

This weekend I went with NPR Music to Newport, Rhode Island to help manage photos and video for live-stream coverage of the Newport Folk Fest. The talented Shantel Mitchell did most of the still shooting, but I grabbed my camera occasionally and wandered out to snap a few.

The weather was fantastic, I ate strawberry shortcake, almost broke my toes, and spent the weekend with some wonderful people. Mike Katzif and I also did a little rogue video shoot with Mountain Man and David Wax Museum, but more on that later. And there were boats ‘n shit! Next week: Jazzzzzz.

All images ©NPR.

Lawn chairs.

Blankets.

Rhode Island State Police in their summer uniforms. (Apparently not as impressive as their award-winning Winter uniforms, I was told.)

Tegan And Sara were charming.

Emmylou Harris

Seagulls over the main stage.

Mountain Man and Middle Brother.

Sunset.

The End.

Boats!

And….

The NPR Music Newport Folk Family, at our beach house (just like MTV’s The Real World):

And here’s a little behind-the scenes from our rogue music video with Mountain Man:

Sasquatch Fest

Zola Jesus: Adventures In Live-Streaming Video

Echo. Echo. Echo. Echo. An Experiment In Sound.

My Weekend As A Concert Photographer (Sort Of)

Mito — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 19:18:14 +0000

I just got back from Sasquatch fest just outside of Seattle, where I went with NPR Music to manage photo coverage. The venue was amazing – on the edge of a giant gorge overlooking the Columbia River – and though it was too cold to wear the shorts I had ambitiously packed, the scene was gorgeous. get it? Gorgeou – shut up I had to.

I spent four consecutive 17-hour workdays mostly coordinating and editing three talented Seattle-based concert photogs: James Bailey, Brittney Bush Bollay, and Alex Crick, and putting their amazing photos online. Occasionally, I picked up the camera myself, and even took a few minutes to actually sit back and enjoy Beach House’s performance (which was beautiful). Here are highlights from my take (all photos ©2011 NPR):

NPR Music's Bob Boilen, Robin Hilton and Amy Schriefer check out the view the day before the festival kicks off.

The hill overlooking the main stage at the Gorge Amphitheater the day before Sasquatch.

The view from the festival site in George, WA, overlooking the Columbia River.

Setting up for Sasquatch.

Festival-goers enjoy the show from the grass.

Julian Briggs, from Vancouver, wears David Bowie face paint on Friday, before Sasquatch kicks off.

Festival-goers watch as Mariachi El Bronx plays on Friday.

Beach House plays on Sunday.

Kelly Carol kisses Mary Foster after Chromeo's set on Monday.

Wayne Coyne walks over the crowd in his hamster ball during the Flaming Lips' set on Sunday.

The front row during Flaming Lips' set on Sunday.

Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne.

The crowd during Flaming Lips.

Foo Fighters take the stage Friday night.

Foo Fighters.

Modest Mouse on Sunday.

Sasquatch and Sharon Van Etten lead the crowd in singing Happy Birthday to the 10-year-old festival.

Lost in the crowd.

A lone 'I heart NPR' beach ball survives among the detritus at the end of the night.

Oh and here I am in action, showing everyone how professionals take pictures in the rain. Thanks Hefty. Photo by Mike Katzif, swell dude.

Folk Yeah! Weekend #1 At Newport Fest.

St. Vincent, Live at 9:30 Club

It’s The Rapture!

Mito — Sat, 21 May 2011 21:15:47 +0000

Kinda sucks when nobody takes you seriously, huh? Well, when the earthquakes start we’ll all know we should have listened to him.

These are a couple of outtakes from an afternoon on the National Mall hanging out with a group of people from Family Radio’s May 21st warning campaign, shot for an NPR story. They actually don’t come off as raving lunatics, they just believe this weird thing without a doubt. I mean, how much would it suck if you knew the world was ending, and nobody would listen to you? It’s all faith, isn’t it?