Republica are back and ready to go! They are touring the UK and I was asked by Saffron (the lead singer) to do some live coverage of their opening night at The Garage in London. Supported by my wife’s band Kovak who started the night with a fantastic set including songs from their new album, doing a great job warming up the crowd. I managed to film a few Kovak songs which will be available on YouTube soon. Republica went down a storm with their fans. Stand out tunes such as the classics, Drop Dead Gorgeous and Ready To Go obviously hit the spot sending the crowd nuts. But it was the new tunes Hallelujah and Christiana Obey that proved that Republica are most definitely back-in-the-game so to speak!
Are Republica Ready To Go?
If you’re wondering the big question…Are Republica Ready To Go?… then check out the video below and you can see them firing on all cylinders. Ready To Go seems like it was in fact written as a come-back song and as Saffron delivered the line “I’m back and Ready To Go from the roof tops shout it out”, there was a poignancy to the moment that made it so special.
Republica Ready To Go – Filming the gig single handed
I was operating alone on this job due to a tight budget so I had no choice but to set up most of the cameras on tripods in fixed positions around the room. One camera was placed behind the band pointing forward and mainly covered the drummer and Tim the keyboard player. I had a master shot from the sound desk which was also acting as an ambient mic position. The final fixed camera was placed to the front right of the stage. This was intentionally set to be quite wide allowing me room to zoom in and out in post production. I was roaming with my handheld shoulder rig on the front left of the stage. I tried to keep moving to give the illusion of more camera angles and operators. I’m using the new Tamron 24-70mm lens which has optical image stabilisation allowing me to make smooth movements which can look similar to that of a jib (with much less setup time and more flexibility). I can highly recommend this lens. Finally I took a direct sound feed from the desk into my Zoom H4N for the main audio track. In post I mixed a little ambient sound into this direct feed to add atmosphere.
Kit List:
Canon 5d Mark II
Canon 550d
Canon HFS100
Sony hdr-cx115e
Zoom H4N
3 Tripods
Shoulder Rig
Lots of batteries and SD cards
For more info on Music Video Production visit my pages