Revisiting an image from a Sunday afternoon at Willie Nelson's ranch. Reading in the national news about a friend performing with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones....

 

Selena R. 

It's an odd end to the week. I got a request to bid on a video project for a pharmaceutical company. Came in via email about 10 minutes after I said to myself, "I wish I had a fun video project to do so I could get some use out of that new GH6...". I'll bid on the adventure and see where it goes. I did a good photo project for the same company last year and they seem to have come back around to us based on the success of that campaign.

The bidding process for video is so arcane. Mostly because you can never tell how long the edit will take. People love to make endless changes to video timelines. And endless tweaks to the motion graphics. Shooting the footage is actually the easy part.

No guarantee that I'll get the project but I decided to pull out the two gimbals we use most for stabilization and make sure the rechargeable batteries are still good. They should be okay since we put them on their chargers every three or four months.

Not sure I want to get pulled back into all the minutia of a project that requires models/talent/actors but I'm hoping that's what a good producer is for. I have one in mind. Ran into her at a recent event. She's still working on film and video productions here in Austin. It's always nice to hand off stuff like casting...

Another odd thing this week. Do you remember the video I did of Chanel as Billie Holiday at Zach Theatre? https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/search?q=chanel+video

Here is Chanel performing for the fundraiser video we created content back in the Summer of 2020. It's her Tina Turner character: https://vimeo.com/462396471  (Shot with a G9 on a gimbal, incidentally...). 

Anyway, back in the fog of Covid I heard that she auditioned for and won the role of Tina Turner in a live theatrical production in the West End, London. Big time. Amazing show. Famous venue.

I was very pleased for her. 

Then I read this week in the New York Times (or maybe it was the Washington Post....the heat, remember?) a short article saying that just last week, near the end of the run of the show, the management let her go. Apparently she'd been invited to perform with the Rolling Stones, in concert, in Milan, Italy. In order to sing with Mick Jagger she had to miss one performance of the Tina show. Not a tough choice in my book. I'd pick the Rolling Stones every time. 

At any rate it seemed strange to read about all the drama in a national newspaper. Chanel is quite a talented performer. I just didn't know she was that famous. 

**********

I photographed with the new (to me) Leica CL today. It was way too hot to do anything complex or even anything that required much effort. In the end I posted one photo of some chairs. Summer is starting to wear on all of us here in Austin. If I walk through the neighborhood in the evening I can sometimes hear the families in their homes praying together that the power not go out and that the air conditioning continue to work. 

I hope their prayers are heard. Coolness is good. 

My Interview with Chanel as Billie Holiday in Zach Theatre's, "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill."

Chanel's Interview at Zach Theatre. Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. from Kirk Tuck on Vimeo.

I recorded this interview at Zach Theatre on April 5th. The still images I used as b-roll as from our dress rehearsal documentation on April 4th. The video footage of rehearsal was recorded on April 2nd. 

Tech notes: The still photographs were taken with a Sony RX10iii camera while all the video content was recorded with the Panasonic FZ2500 camera using its 4K video setting. I lit Chanel's interview with two large, Aputure Amaran 672W LED panels plus two smaller panels from the same company. 

Audio was recorded with an Aputure Diety shotgun microphone. 

My next video is an interview of the production's director. 

(please click through to Vimeo and choose the 1080p, HD version of the video for best quality). 


I decided to film Chanel's interview at Zach Theatre with the fz2500 because my early tests showed me that the color in video was rich and accurate, with little of the overly sharp renditions I'd seen in other, similar cameras. It's incumbent on a videographer to take the time to test the equipment ahead of time to see, personally, how the settings on the camera affect the final results. I was able to see a kinder skin tone rendition with the Panasonic.

I set the camera up to shoot UHD 4K with the idea of downsampling. But, rather than downsample by transcoding on the import of the material I decided to actually work with the original 4K footage in the edit and only apply the transcoding when making the output version into h.264. I thought I would see improvements in overall quality when done in this fashion. When I output the video to the h.264 codec I saw two things: The compression of h.264 exacerbates the noise by a bit (not too troublesome) and it also compresses the tonal range of the middle tones enough to make the overall files slightly darker than they are in Final Cut Pro X, or when played in their native format via QuickTime Pro.

Just to test a bit further and to see where the limitations really hit I also output the file to a Pro Res 422 HQ file. This file had 10 times less compression. The h.264 files weighed in at 695 megabytes while the HQ files tipped the scales at 10 gigabytes. Viewing them side by side makes on more aware of the destruction wrought by compression. The bigger file is much more tonally detailed; the tones are well separated and the tonal transitions are as smooth as they seem in real life. The bigger file also shows less noise in comparison. It's really a moot point for a project like this one which will be used on YouTube by my client. The amount of compression in YouTube's process is at least a whole order of magnitude more destructive than the conversion to h.264 out of Final Cut Pro X. I wish I could show clients, family and friends (and Chanel) just how good the high quality file looks on a calibrated screen in a viewing appropriate room.

I think the secret to getting good video from an $1100 cameras is to pay strict attention to fundamentals. There can be no slop in exposure calculation. If you need to bring up exposure from an underexposed file you'll end up losing precious detail and it will degrade image quality. Don't plan on boosting shadows after the fact; take the time (and light) to fill the shadows to the level you'll want them in the edit before you push the record button. Controlling the range of tones, and the overall dynamic range, is an artistic step as well as a technical process. They are intertwined.

The same applies to color correction. If you've worked with smaller Jpeg files in photography you'll know that they can't be totally corrected if you didn't get it right in camera. Push the blues and you kill the yellows; push the magenta and kill the greens. It's all as interrelated as the Buddhist view of the universe. If you are working with an inexpensive camera you don't have the luxury of endless latitude but, guess what? the DPs I talk to don't believe that their twenty and thirty thousand dollar cameras have latitude to spare either. They get color balance correct in camera. A quick custom white balance at the head of the interview prevents hours of slider jockeying and teeth gnashing later in the process.

If you have the color and exposure nailed into place then the next thing to worry about is shadow and highlight mapping. I use the shadow/highlight tool in FCPX a lot. For this I had a one notch increase in shadow exposure and a one notch decrease in shadow exposure (on an S curve) which helped to open up the shadows and keep highlights from burning out. In the CineLike D profile I used I changed several parameters. I upped the contrast by one notch, upped the sharpness control by one notch and decreased the noise reduced by three notches. In retrospect I should have also reduced saturation by a small amount.

I took the time to light everything. There is a big, soft main light and a big, soft counter-balancing fill light on the opposite side. I have lights on the background and a weak backlight on Chanel. The lights establish the highlight and shadow range and are critical to the way I see video.

The one place I wish I had more control was over the ambient noise in the theater. The theater is a large space and we were just a couple hours away from a full audience show. In Texas it is critical to keep the house at the right temperature and we were unable to turn off the air conditioning. You can hear as a low frequency noise bed. I was torn because a lavaliere microphone might have gotten me a bit less noise but the lower noise would have come at the price of really clean high frequency response and also clarity in the mid-tones. I made the choice and I'll have to live with it when I listen to the final result in a quiet room.

I hope you enjoy the interview. Chanel is a world class singer and actor and, I find, an interview subject who makes her interviewers look more competent. I appreciate the time and expertise she put into helping me tell this story about the her show; and about Billie Holiday.

Read this book and save your creative life.

Mixing media is what's making my transition to shooting more video fun. And appealing to my clients.

Video and photography have always seemed to be two different camps. One camp is dedicated to freezing the perfect moment while the other camp is equally dedicated to telling stories with moving images. For a long time the intersection between the camps was almost non-existent. Photographers were happy to leave video alone and concentrate on heading out in the world with their "optical butterfly nets" to capture perfect, individual images they hoped would grab the attention of viewers and hold them in the moment. Videographers grudgingly used still photographs in their edits when the topic of their work no longer existed in any other form. Think of the work Ken Burns did with his "Civil War" TV series... an impressive use of photographic archives and collections.

The inclusion of photographs in documentary video has largely limited to historic photographs. Old scenes captured mostly in black and white. Images of 1970's protests caught on slides and negatives but not always on video and certainly not to the same extent.

I've been doing a bunch of editing on my video projects recently and I began to realize how valuable concurrent photography could be as content in my moving picture work. I first started using still images to supplement video content for an interview I did with Dave Jarrott who played the part of J. Edgar Hoover in a play about President Lyndon Baines Johnson. The interview ended up cut down to about six minutes but we had not shot any b-roll and we only used one camera angle for the project. A week or so later I photographed the dress rehearsal of the play and made a point to shoot  as many images of Dave Jarrott in his role as I could.

I went back to the original edit (which includes what I felt was just the right content) and started layering in still images. Some of the additions were utilitarian; they covered visible edit points which were jarring but unavoidable. But some images I added because I thought their visual resonance added power to the verbal content Dave was sharing. In the end I mixed in over 50 still images over the six minutes of interview dialog. The dress rehearsal photos were in color and needed to stay that way to convey the feel of the stage lighting and the set design but that led me to convert the color interview footage to black and white which I felt very much enhanced the feel of the project. I shared the finished piece with the theater's artistic director and he was amazed --- and very enthusiastic about reposting the interview.

https://vimeo.com/206494099

With this good experience under my belt I headed to Canada to shoot four more videos. This time I made the shooting of still images an important part of my process. I wanted a folder full of relevant images to pepper through the four interviews in order to re-inforce messaging and to help pace the overall presentation. The style guide of the client is to make the videos at least 25% black and white but not more than 50% of the overall video program. This helped nudge me in the opposite direction I had taken in the previous project. Now I was making the still images black and white and the main interview footage color and it seemed to work well for me as well as the client.

With each project I see more and more how I can leverage my still photographer's sense of composition and timing, along with lighting and effective post production to make content that enhances the flow of the videos.

By the time I was ready to interview the star of the "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill" production, at Zach Theatre, I had already created still photographs at both the tech and dress rehearsals and had over 1200 still images at my disposal with which to edit. As the project came together I couldn't find a rationale for making some parts black and white and some color so I kept the entire project in color. The images capture emotional high points in the show that couldn't be easily re-created in the course of a quick interview (if at all). I was able to match the emotional feel of the images to the content of the conversation we created. It was remarkable to me to see how much more alive the interview became with the inclusion of the photographs; mostly because they are so precisely aligned with what Chanel is telling us; sentence by sentence.

https://vimeo.com/213380186

To do the same thing totally in video might have been possible but not nearly as easy. Shooting photographs in raw allows so much post production enhancement to the images. Flesh tones can be matched and improved, microphones removed from the frames, shadows lightened and defined areas of saturation boosted. I could fine tune noise reduction and increase sharpness at will. In short, I could touch each frame with as much work as it needed to have in a way that would be extraordinarily costly and time consuming in video. All of this adds to the perceived production value of the final piece.

This method can be done by a team such as a videographer working in tandem with a photographer, or you can embrace the philosophy of "One Man Movies" and do what you need to in phases. It's not always easy to switch gears and go between video and stills seamlessly. I needed to shoot the dress and tech rehearsals strictly as still photography to make sure I didn't miss anything that was potentially critical for marketing and advertising. Video during that process would have been a distraction. And when I shot the interviews there was no way to re-light the stage, change costumes and shoot the hundreds and hundreds of different poses and emotional inflections I was able to get in the still images. Doing each separately was good for the process.

I've shown a fairly large number of regular commercial clients the final version of the "Lady Day..." video and they have been very complementary and quite interested in understanding how we can make the technique of mixing photography and video together work for their future projects. In most cases the best way to proceed is to interview first and then catch a combination of photos and video of the subjects covered in the interviews afterward. Some parts will lend themselves to video while some of the more "heroic" images might lend themselves to stills. Photographs that add value by dint of being able to be optimized, layered, composited, etc. are especially valuable because many of the effects one can do to maximize the impact of a still frame are extravagant and costly when done in video.

I'm booked on two more healthcare projects and we just bid on a mixed media project for a utility company. Each of the projects is a good candidate for the intermixing of stills and video and the art directors involved are on board. It's fun for me to make a transition across media without loosening my grasp on the art that's brought me so far along this journey. Just a new way to frame and deliver the photographs I've always loved doing while putting a big smile on the faces of my clients.

That I was able to make the second video  (Lady Day...) and shoot the stills with just one $1200 camera continues to amaze me. It's more and more obvious to me that the idea and the production is more important than the actual cameras at every step of the process. No magic bullets, no magic beans; just the joy of doing the work.

And Just Like That VSL Is Back. Warning, a lot of this post is about the big show I've been working on. And video. If you don't like that, don't worry, we forgot to charge you for the programming.

 

Here's my favorite video for the show: https://vimeo.com/462396471

The opening number for the live stream program is at the bottom of this post!

You have to go to Vimeo to see them. I don't trust you guys to watch it in some tiny, embedded format here and the bust my chops because it's too small...

Vacation from the VSL blog.

I really needed that break. I was trying to concentrate on this enormous volunteer project for Zach Theatre back in late August and I kept running out of mental bandwidth. And time. I was feeling stale on the blog since we hadn't worked much and even I'll admit that swimming isn't really a spectator sport. I'm glad some of you waited around to see if the blog would revive. I did write in my Sept. 2nd post that "this is not goodbye.."

How did I recharge the "creative batteries"? Mostly by working a lot on new stuff instead of writing about working. That, and copious amounts of swimming and walking. Between sessions of filming out in the heat and humidity I took times for naps, ate well and read more books. The end result is that I wanted to come back and write. Seems like I missed writing at least as much as you missed reading new stuff. 

So, let's catch up. 

I'm not sure I've been very clear about the project I've been working on so I think we should start there with some background and description. 

Zach Theatre's Annual Fundraising Gala: AKA: Red, Hot and Soul. 

Zachary Scott Theatre has been actively making live theater (plays, musicals, dramas, lectures) for the last 99 years. For the last ten years we've been lucky to have a brand new, state of the art theater space to work in as well as three other stages on the campus in which to produce kids programs, smaller productions, and intimate, limited time engagements. 

The Theatre, while regional, is a standout in the country for the quality of its work and is often used as a resource by famous playwrights to develop new productions. Anna Devere Smith has done two of her debuts in our theaters. Holland Taylor debuted "Ann" in our theater before taking it to Broadway. Tony Kushner was in our audiences for the first regional run of "Angels in America." And the list goes on. Steven Dietz often debuts his work here; most recently his take on "Dracula." 

Our theater is big on education and community outreach. Each year 50,000 school age children are treated to live performances here. There is also an accredited academy for kids who want an alternative learning experience with emphasis on theater as well as a regular school curriculum. Many of the children who see plays at Zach are able to do so because their attendance is subsidized. Scholarships are available for those who want to go to the academy but lack financial resources. 

So, every year Zach Theatre's budget is split between creating great, community-based theater and providing a wide array of learning opportunities. Add in a very a professional staff and you can imagine that expenses are high. But in normal years the theater is able to make ends meet by combining ticket sales for their MainStage shows, private donations, grants and support from the city of Austin. They've always been able to come up with needed $$$  and the event that tips the budget out of the red each year is a fabulous fundraising gala they call: Red, Hot and Soul. 

The theater erects a giant, air conditioned tent in the central plaza, the furnishings are top shelf, as is the alcohol. The catering (lovely dinners) is by the Four Season Hotel and is flawless/delicious. Singers and actors serenade and entertain the guests and, of course, there are the pitches for the guests to get generous, open their wallets and support Zach. Every year they raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from this one night event. It covers a lot of the expenses of providing a first class live theater venue for our community. 

But this year is different. The Theatre went dark at the end of February because of the pandemic. Audiences have been unable to attend any indoor productions. Staff has been laid off. There has been a real existential fear that after 99 years of creativity, inspiration, and the delivery of happiness and joy, our theater would run out of money and close its doors. 

The senior staff decided to throw a Red, Hot and Soul gala this year, but virtually. They needed to capture the excitement of the event but without the catering, the cramped banquet table camaraderie and the open bars. But what we still had was a bunch of very creative and popular actors, a committed choreographer, a bright, young in-house video producer and a masochistic volunteer with a history of shooting video. That last one would be me. 

It was decided that we'd create a bunch of creative content, intermix that creative content with a live show featuring two emcees, and we'd stream the whole thing up live on YouTube and Facebook. The show would eventually come together (last night) and run almost two hours. The first half hour consisted of photos of past productions intermixed with music, auction items people could bid on, and snippets of interviews with actors and directors. 

After that virtual happy hour we'd launch the main show. It would have a creative opening video which we shot back in August mixed with the two live presenters. Then a video of the the kids performing a musical dance number mixed again with the two wise guys in the house.  We would cut away to (pre-recorded) quick "check-ins" of people celebrating the event with "watch" parties in their homes. I filmed one such party and my brief was to cut back on the production quality and try to make video that looked like the party attendees were shooting it with their phones. I tried but sadly, it's still in focus and well exposed. I did shake the camera a lot... But the audio is just too damn good.      

The one hour (plus some O.T.) ends with Los Angeles based singer/actor: Chanel singing two hits from Tina Turner. That's no coincidence as she was recently cast by a theater in London's famous West End to take on the role of Tina Turner for the season. Of course, that was just before the pandemic shut down the whole London theater scene. 

After Chanel's video there's a video of tap dancing to a Stevie Wonder hit and then we sign off and cut to a pre-recorded video of a D.J. to finish up with a bit more house party. 

So, what was my role? 

It started out with me volunteering to help make video, along with a couple other professionals who initially volunteered. But before we even started shooting they realized that this was an enormous project and they (gracelessly?) backed out. That left me and the in-house producer as the sole crew for a couple parts of the project. Namely, the first half and the second half. 

Using a creative narrative conceived by the theater's artistic director, Dave Steakley, we would need to create original video for six different modules for which Joshua and I would do the pre-production, story-boarding, camera work, direction and post production. One critical duty I had for each program was to bring the bling. I was the donor of any and all camera and lighting equipment that was required. I operated the camera for every second of every video. I also went from being a gimbal virgin to a gimbal pro over the space of six weeks (easy enough to do if you have a gimbal in your hands for at least a couple hours a day, every day).    

When we ran out of light I pulled lighting stuff out of the studio inventory and had it ready to go. If we needed to record an interview I brought along the bag full of microphones. We'd let the space dictate the microphone we ended up using. 

Joshua worked with the development team to schedule our talents. On several shoots we had several dozen talents on exterior locations to work with. We'd do a quick rehearsal and try to get our footage in a couple of takes.  At the end of every day I'd put all the raw footage on a hard drive and Joshua would have to take it home and scrub through it, looking for whatever visual gems we happened to get. Then he had the unenviable task of doing all of the editing. We worked hand-in-hand to find codecs and color profiles that would work under wildly different conditions but still keep shadows and highlights under control. 

Just last Sunday we were shooting the last of our video properties. We'd shot nearly every weekend and lots of weekdays between August 16th and September 20th. Mix in regular clients and a consistent schedule of swims and you start to get an idea why I felt that also keeping the blog well stocked might be a step too far...

So, at some point in the mix, we had to decide how to handle the live show. We would have our creative performances pre-recorded and in the can but how would we handle the live streaming? In a moment of heedless delirium I suggested that we do a three camera production but I was pretty adamant that since I'd never streamed live before (and didn't want to learn how or buy that kind of gear) we should get a professional crew to do the live show audio and technical work of making a show seem bulletproof and seamless. We bit the bullet and hired a company called, "Werd." And they turned out to be great. They brought along a show director, a video/switching professional and an audio engineer. They did their jobs perfectly. And they were fun to work with. 

We lacked a teleprompter and teleprompter operator and the three cameras that would present the live feed on the big day. I guess I was still dazed from a month of volunteering but as my consciousness floated above my body I heard myself suggest that "since I was no longer busy shooting video every day I guessed I could handle the three cameras on the big day." As I floated back down into my body I screamed at my inner self -- "What the hell were you thinking?" It was a rhetorical question. I was already committed. 

One of the emcees provided the teleprompter pro. An old family friend. He was great.

The three camera "TV" show. 

So, here's what I learned about live streaming a multi-camera show to Facebook and Youtube: 

No one streams 4K video. No one streams 10 bit video. No one streams 4:2:2 video. No one streams .Mov video. Your goal is to provide a 1080p video feed that is as skinny (anemic?) as your camera can possibly provide and to make all the color and contrast tweaks humanly possible in camera, in advance, since there is NO opportunity to fix anything in post. Good files = small files. 

I found out that all three of my Lumix S1x series cameras can (under humiliating distress) shoot M4P files at the blistering data rate of.... 28 mbs. Not 280. Just 28. 

To make things easy for the continuous uploading while switching seamlessly between three cameras you want to make sure that all the settings match up. If you are shooting the show at 30 fps then all three cameras need to be set to 30 fps. If you chose to make a custom look with a tweaked "natural" profile then all three cameras need to have the same color profile. 

To make it visually transparent to the audience you also need to make sure you color balance all three cameras with the same target in the actual lighting the presenter will live in. And it's a big help to keep both of your presenters in focus. 

We filmed our live presenters in front of a wall of donor plaques in the main lobby of the big theater building. I had the Lumix S1H set up, with the teleprompter, right down the middle. It was a medium to medium wide shot that took in both presenters and bookended them with a flower arrangement on each side. My instructions to them: Stay inside the flowers and you'll be visible. Venture beyond the flowers and you'll quickly fall into obscurity.

The S1H was equipped with the battery grip which (tested in advance) would give me a minimum of 2.5 hours of run time. Without high data rate files, AF and image stabilization it would be closer to 3 hours. I used the 24-70mm f2.8 at f5.6 and tweaked exposure with the ISO setting. At the shooting distance, f-stop and shutter speed I had a zone of sharp focus that was about three feet deep. If needed, I could tweak on the fly. I knew the presenters weren't used to using teleprompters and I figured they'd be scared to go too far off script and get lost so I knew our center camera would get the most play time. 

I used a second camera, a Lumix S1, over to the left (as I faced the presenters) by about 35 degrees in order to get a different look. That camera was used with the 24-105mm zoom set to about 50mm and also tuned in at f5.6. Since I only had the one battery grip I set up each of the two side camera with  Anker Power Banks plugged into the camera's USB-C input. This charged the battery while the camera worked. 

The third camera was an S1 on the other side, but a bit further back than the left camera and set up to use a longer lens so I could get tighter shots that showed bigger heads and less background. This camera also had an external battery running into the USB-C and sported a 70-200mm f4.0 Lumix S-Pro lens. Since this and the 24-70mm both have manual focusing capability via a clutch I took advantage of it. I decided on a focal length that worked well and then focused on the closest presenter. I marked that focus point on the lens with a piece of white tape. I then focused on the second presenter and marked that focus point with a white piece of tape. By using those reference marks I could fine tune focus for each person, when they led the script, without having to punch in to check focus. Two reasons for this: First, the Lumix cameras won't punch in while you are currently running video recording! and secondly, if you could punch in you'd see the magnified image in the mix at the video mixer. The old, tape-on-the-lens method works without a lot of fuss and obviates the need for eye-strain. 

I did cheat on the center camera by using a Ninja V monitor (not recording video, just monitoring). With the Ninja you can take the HDMI signal out of camera and into the monitor so you can punch in there to confirm or tweak focus. The magnification doesn't affect the image output. It also gives you a bigger, brighter screen that's easier to visually assess accurate focus on. In the "monitor but not record" mode the Atomos Ninja V lasted all evening with one Sony NP-900 series battery. In fact, it was so parsimonious with power that the battery indicator never showed less than 100%.

When the live show started I stayed close to the "tight" image camera on the right side as long as we were live. If we switched and played a canned video I made the rounds to the other two cameras to make sure everything was going according to plan. I knew the run of show from memorizing the schedule earlier so I knew the points at which we'd be off and the pre-recorded stuff would be on. I'd get back to the tight camera with 30 or 40 seconds to spare, check focus and then pay attention to the presenters' movements.

The streaming production team was thrilled to get feed from three tightly matched cameras but I have to say that seeing the final product highly compressed on YouTube or (even worse) on Facebook is a bit depressing. At least I have the three isolated channels saved from the three cameras. Just in case I want to make some alternate edits in the future. 

So, how did the show work? 

We didn't miss a beat. No one on the crew messed up. The teleprompter guy was a consummate pro who never got ahead or behind his speakers. My cameras were rock solid every step of the way. The two back ups weren't needed. The presenters sold the program well. We did this whole thing on a shoe string but at last count we raised, over the course of two hours, well over $200,000(+) for the theatre. We beat our initial goal comfortably. Success. 

Funny to observe that during the technical rehearsal the day before, and prior to the start of the show, nerves are frayed, anxiety runs high, actors pace the room like trapped animals and engineers triple check their tools. 

Once the show starts people get pulled away from thinking about "what could go wrong" and just get into the flow of doing their jobs.

When the show is over there's a delay of any show of emotion until the donation tally is announced. If we did a good job everyone becomes euphoric. Happy. Optimistic. 

Someone actually said, "I can hardly wait to do this again next year.....!" I slunk closer to the wall and quickly got my gear out the front door. I didn't want to take the risk that I might inadvertently volunteer again. For once the logical side of my brain had a firm grip on the car keys. 

And here's the video we opened the show with: https://vimeo.com/462399373

This week I'll break it down into smaller chunks and talk about how I learned to gimbal, etc. Stay tuned.

Gearing up to shoot another little video project for Zach Theatre. Putting the Panasonic fz2500 through its paces.

I have a project to do for Zach Theatre. They are producing "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill." It's a musical play about Billie Holiday and from what I've heard so far it's amazing. We thought it might be a good idea to expand on the idea of the quick interviews we did of three actors for the previous "LBJ" play and do a nice video interview with Chanel; who will be playing the role of Billie Holiday; and a second interview with director, Michael Rader.

I'm trying to be more strategic in my approach to these video projects so we don't get rushed into producing a bunch of (mostly unusable) footage under tight schedules. We haven't scouted shooting locations for the interviews yet but we know they will be somewhere on the Zach "campus." Before we schedule the actual interviews I want to see what kind of b-roll we can get of the two interviewees  in the context of the play. The "behind the scenes footage."

Tomorrow afternoon is the last rehearsal before the tech rehearsal on Sunday. I'm heading to swim practice in the early morning and then will get to the theater around 12:30 pm to get ready for some very discreet, candid video shooting while Michael and Chanel go through a full run of the show.

I won't be lighting any of this and I don't need to record sound. I'm shooting with the fz2500 on a monopod so I can move quickly and get as many angles and compositions as I can. I've mapped out a list of shots I want, everything from tight shots of Chanel's face while she sings to much looser "two" shots of the team working through the fine-tuning that always happens. I plan on taking this footage and rendering it as black and white. I'm not worried about noise because I love the look of grain in black and white and have been testing in post with files from the fz2500 to get a very similar effect. I'll use it in conjunction with the color footage from the interviews. It's a luxury I didn't have with the previous projects. I'll have about two hours to get as much good stuff as I can.

Today I tested my set up. I'm shooting in 4K with the idea of downsampling to 1080p (Pro-Res 4:2:2) in post. At ISOs all the way up to 6400 I'm fine with the way the noise works in black and white. I wouldn't really consider going there in color. I'm shooting in color with the Cinelike D profile instead of shooting black and white in camera because I'll have a lot more options for the conversion to monochrome in the editing software.

The image stabilization in 4K is pretty good. Not as crazy good as it is in 1080p but the use of a monopod more or less equalizes the stability advantages of the 1080p, five axis performance. I've also been working on focusing for high sharpness with longer focal lengths and longer distances. Frank and I played with all the variations this morning and we found an interesting and weird anomaly. When using the mechanical shutter I tend to get a tiny bit of secondary ghosting that only becomes obvious when I chimp the files at 16X (this is in the "stills" mode/photographs) but the ghosting goes away if I use the electronic shutter setting. It makes sense that if we were going to see vibration induced image destruction it would happen at the higher magnifications. Something learned for the next still shoot.

While I am using the Cinelike D profile I am fine-tuning it by pulling out some of the noise reduction. I'm working at minus three right now and can see more detail; especially at higher ISOs.
This reportage style of shooting should be a nice test of the camera's video functionality and I'm happy that I've tested most of the parameters in advance.

I'll go to the other extreme next week when I shoot the interviews and bring a bunch of good lighting; aiming to shoot as close to the "native" ISO of the camera as I can and with an aim to get wonderful skin tones. I want the contrast between the black and white b-roll and the color interview footage to be very obvious.

With a pocket full of batteries and a 128 Gb card in the slot I should be able to get as much b-roll as I'd ever want to dig through.

From my tests so far the 4K video from the camera is really, really pretty. Nicely detailed with few motion artifacts. I'm ordering an Atomos Ninja Inferno monitor/recorder to use for the interviews; I'd like to see how the footage looks writing the files directly to 4k Pro-Res files instead of the H.264 internal files. I'll flesh out a report as soon as I test it out.

The fz2500 is a camera with a very nice, very camera-esque personality. I like it a lot even if I think the files coming out of its closest rival, the Sony RX10iii are just a hair sharper and contrastier. Once I drag the Panasonic files through post processing you'd never be able to tell the difference. Remember? We're adding grain...

I'll keep them both. Interesting personalities and perfect for two different project mindsets. More after the shoot........

Gearing up for an interesting series of video assignments. I know what I'll be doing every Saturday evening from Oct. 17th through Nov. 7th.

Once you've got a really big project under your belt all the restraints come off and the work flows in. At least that's the way it feels today. 

We've got a couple of photographic assignments to take care of this month but I'm spending more time figuring out and telling ad agencies how we're going to do stuff safely than I am at figuring out the nuts and bolts of the jobs. A group contacted me last week to see about shooting some products on location, and a bit of b-roll of their client's offices, and I was okay with that. But after I agreed and we were in the scheduling phase they came back and casually dropped an unwelcome wrinkle into the mix. They added a request to do "headshots" of five or six individuals, possibly in the office.

My immediate response was, "No." Followed by, "If this is a requirement of the job then I'll have to pass on this one." Now we're in the, "What if we photography them outdoors?" stage of the negotiation. I'm sure we'll work out something but I can guarantee that it won't include me setting up a temporary studio in a small, interior conference room and interfacing with five or six unmasked people about whom I know absolutely nothing. The subject seems especially poignant given the current situation with the president. The agency is generally very rationale and straight-shooting so I imagine we'll figure out something that works well for both all parties. 

Added note: All good here. The client's intention was always to do exterior portraits, it just wasn't conveyed in the bid process. The actual labs and manufacturing that we're shooting are huge and lightly populated by strictly masked workers. I saw footage of the facility just after lunch and there's ample space and high ceilings. Not what I originally feared! I guess I'm just being jumpy after all the recent news. 

I have several other photography projects booked for October but all of the others are planned for exterior locations so it should be smooth sailing. Two are with groups of physicians so I'm guessing they'll be especially careful when it comes to personal safety. 

But what I really want to write about here today is the upcoming series of videos I mentioned in the title. 

Following up on the success of Zach Theatre's fundraising livestream (Sept. 26) we're embarking on a series of outdoor concerts which will take place in the plaza, just in front of the theater building. Each week will feature a different theme and different performers. One week will be "Motown Goove" another will be "On Broadway" the following week will be "70's Female Rockstars" and the final week will feature "Superstar Chanel" (who sang the Tina Turner songs on the livestream video I posted last week). Each genre will run from Thursday through Sunday starting on the 17th of October. Each show will feature one or two singers and a small group of musicians.

The series is being called, "Songs Under the Stars." 

The Theater has ample outside space on their plaza to host a little over one hundred socially distanced people (in various pods) and since it's all outdoors it should be a safe experience. The concerts will start each night at 7:30 and run for approximately one hour. Our collective goal, beyond making the revenue from the live performances, and keeping peoples' interest in live productions, will be to record the Saturday concert for each genre in the series with an eye to streaming the video of the concerts behind a paywall on Vimeo. 

And that's where I come in. 

I'll be at each Saturday performance with three cameras. I'll need to stay stationary during the show so I won't be able to do any fancy gimbal work of the performers (although I would love to...) but I'll be working with two "show" cameras to get a static wide shot with one camera and then do "follow" work with the second camera. By follow work I mean using a much longer lens and getting medium and close up shots of the performers. 

I'm planning to use the S1H as the main/follow camera; coupled with the 70-200mm S-Pro lens. I hope to be close enough to the stage to use the S1H in its full frame configuration but I'm not at all hesitant to switch the camera to the APS-C/Super35 mode in order to get 50% more magnification, if I have to. 

The second camera will likely be the GH5 fitted with the 12mm Meike cinema lens for the wide, stage shots. That camera will be stationary and we'll depend on deep depth of field to maintain sharp focus throughout the show. 

We'll be shooting 4K in both cameras with an eye to being able to crop in for tighter shots where it's needed. Since we'll be editing on a 1080p timeline we shouldn't lose any sharpness with the crop. 

I'll set up the GH5 with no microphone and the built-in mic/audio set to ALC. We need only to get a "scratch track" out of that camera and we'll leave the heavy-lifting for audio to the S1H. The scratch track from the wide will only be used to sync up the audio we record in the S1H to the video streams from both cameras. It's so easy now to sync audio to video in either Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro. 

Each camera will be on a tripod equipped with a fluid video head. It's critical for the primary/close up camera since I'll need to follow action, albeit in a limited range. It's better to do it smoothly. It makes the captured video much more watchable. 

I'm putting external monitors on each camera rig and the running cables from the output of the monitors to a monitor for the show director. With the two monitors in front of him he'll be able to call out directions like: "Can you zoom in closer to Bob?" or "Can you catch more of Chanel and less of the band?" Etc. 

If we had more budget it would be great to put wireless transmitters on both of the camera monitor HDMI outputs and then run the received signals into a single workstation so we don't have to run cable or come up with four total monitors. At the current time I own three of the Atomos monitor/recorders and I may just borrow a fourth from one of my fellow, local videographers. Either that or forgo the director monitor dedicated to the wide camera...

Since we're putting a monitor into the director's hands it just makes sense that we'll both be wearing communications gear. A headset for each with an attached microphone and wireless transmitters and receivers. This way we can be socially distanced and still be on the same directoral page. 

The stage area will be well lit with theatrical spots which is a good thing since the show's start time of 7:30 will be post-sunset by the show dates. With good lighting on the stage I don't think we'll need to go over ISO 800 for either camera. A cakewalk for the S1H and well within the range of "good" for the GH5. Added to the mix is the fact that all the footage will be downsampled in the final rendering to 1080p which should minimize any noise that does show up.

As far as audio goes the S1H is an obvious choice for recording it. The camera has a wide range of input sensitivity and, when using the audio interface accessory I am able to accept long XLR runs from the sound engineer's mixing board and match the camera to the line input. We'll monitor the audio carefully at the sound check and get a good sense for the loudest parts of the show. I don't expect to have to do much with the audio levels once we set a "show" level but I'll have a earphone plugged into one ear and I'll be spot checking the meters all the way through. I can send the signal to both channels and set one of them 6DB lower than the other as a means of having a lower level back-up channel in case we hit some unwanted clipping. I'll call that a safety channel. 

As a final safety we'll have the sound engineer record the feed off the mixing board onto a digital audio recorder. That way, if I totally screw up the sound we can replace it with a clean track. 

While it seems obvious why I would select the S1H as my primary camera you might wonder about my choice of the GH5 for the second, wide camera. 

Colorwise it matches up well with the S1H. It has, by far the longest battery life while running, and using it as the wide/close camera takes advantage of its deeper depth of field. With dual card slots it's able to run well past our one hour run time estimate even in 10 bit 4K, and it's rock solid. 

I also want to bring along a third camera, probably the G9 set up on a gimbal, so I can shoot a bunch of b-roll of the pre-show sound checks, the guest arrivals, some wide, establishing shots of the venue and maybe even some "footage" of people enjoying/applauding the shows. The G9 makes sense because I am comfortable with it as a gimbal superstar. And that would leave an extra S1 or two as back-ups for all the other cameras. 

Since this stuff won't be live-streamed it's a lot less anxiety provoking for me. I'm looking forward to four beautiful nights under the Texas stars, listening to live music and making little movies. 

Lots to look forward to and I'm sure I see many familiar faces in the audience and among the crew. It feels good to work on scheduled productions again. Every day I shoot video I get more practice and get more comfortable with it. I should mention that these concert videos are not pro bono. I will be paid.

The video projects are starting to stack up and that's just what I wanted for this Fall. 

More to come....

Photographing The Stage With an Old Favorite: The Sony A7rii. And its understudy...

On Saturday, at a rehearsal, I shot video of "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill" with the Panasonic fz2500. The 4K video looked really, really good so I brought that camera back the next evening to shoot images from lots of different angles at the technical rehearsal. But last night I defaulted back to the tried and true cameras for the important images at the dress rehearsal. The "go-to" camera for me at the theater these days is the Sony A7Rii. It has much to commend it; the 42 megapixel sensor is great at higher ISOs, and at moderate ISOs the image quality is pretty much unbeatable by anything else in the 35mm sensor sized digital camera market. A medium format sensor might be theoretically better but I'd be hard pressed to find the right glass for any of the models I'd want to budget for. 

I haven't seen a 70-200mm f4.0 with image stabilization on the Hasselblad roadmap....or Fuji's roadmap, for that matter. And neither of those camera can challenge the A7Rii's hybrid CD-AF/PD-AF focusing performance. 

I was planted mid-way up the house with a full audience surrounding me. I set the camera to the "silent mode" and was audibly stealthy for the rest of the evening. Since I was shooting frequently and chimping rarely, the dinky battery in the camera got me through about 700 frames.

About half the time I used the camera in the APS-C mode which gets me 50% more reach and still delivers 18 megapixels of good file. The camera and the 70-200mm f4.0 lens make for a great theater shooting photography system. I can shoot wide open without hesitation and I can handhold at all the shutter speeds that will freeze subject movement, without concern. 

Last night I also packed a system that gave me about 2X the reach of the A7rii and the 70/200 (used in APS-C mode). It was the redoubtable, Sony RX10iii. I swear that camera is magic. Its color profile is nearly identical with the A7rii and it matches, tonally, as well. But the ability to reach out with a 600mm equivalent reach and to watch the image stabilization steady up the image in the finder is breathtaking. I tend to set the RX10iii to f4.0 and leave it there. It's sharp and contrasty and, even though focusing is slightly slower than the newer Panasonic fz2500 when it locks in it's right on the money every time. No caveats. 

In a rational and sane photographic universe I would own four perfectly complementary cameras: Two A7rii's and two RX10iii's. I can't imagine anything I could not handle, photographically, with those two systems. The thing that cured my long time (chronic?) gear acquisition compulsion is the simple fact that Sony makes the two dominant cameras in their respective fields and I already own both of them. What else is there to buy?  I guess the closest thing, in terms of image quality, would be a Nikon D810 with a painstakingly calibrated 70-200mm lens inside a sound proof blimp. Wouldn't that be fun to shoot with? (sarcasm intended here). 

As to the perfect super-zoom bridge camera, nothing out there matches or betters the overall photographic performance of the RX10iii. I am tempted to buy a back-up just in case Sony management goes insane and discontinues it. To have used one and then have the option taken away would be heart-breaking. 

These files are too small to assess on the web. I am constricted to uploading files that are no larger than 2200 pixel on the long side. Take me at my word when I say that these files look amazing spread across a Retina screen at full resolution. Both cameras amaze me everything time I use them. 

On another note; I used the Panasonic fz2500 today to do interviews with Chanel (the actor shown here) and the director of the play. I was reminded of just how good a video camera it is and how different recording video is from recording very high resolution photography files. I am as impressed by the 4K video that came from the Panasonic this afternoon as I was when processing the Sony photography files this morning. A time of amazing camera riches, for sure!

A Nice Distraction from the Post Election Day Jitters. How about a concert under the stars?

Chanel at Zach Theater's "Songs Under the Stars" concert. 

An amazing voice coupled with a wonderful stage presence. 

I can't remember a busier time in the last couple of years. I've been photographing concerts, lawyers, doctors, bio-tech products and demos and an endless stream of performance videos for the last couple of months. I'm ready for a work break. Maybe a trip to Teralingua. 

Last night was a night to go a little retro. I was asked to photograph Chanel's show at Zach Theatre for their outdoor concert series. I was delighted to be able to do so. It was a relaxed and chilled out evening and that was in stark contrast to the pervasive angst many people are experiencing because of the election drama. I showed up for our outdoor concert, grabbed a box of buttery popcorn from the concession stand, along with a plastic cup of Cabernet Sauvignon (and a straw....) and grabbed my little square of space. It's a space where I can see all the angles of the main and secondary stage but not be in any audience member's line of sight. 

I preset my cameras and munched fresh, hot popcorn as the temperature dropped into the delicious 60's. If my tripod actually had a cup holder I would have put my wine there but I didn't even bring a tripod so even my libation was strictly handheld. I do find it impossible to shoot well with a camera+long lens in one hand and a beverage in the other so I parked the wine cup on the ground, next to my extra camera. I figured they could keep each other company. 

I didn't want to carry in a bunch of camera gear because I'm getting lazy and jaded and starting to believe my own propaganda about the photographer being much more important than the gear. Instead of the big S1x cameras and their ponderous (but exquisite) lenses I chose to shoot the entire show with a doddering old Panasonic GH5 (firmware 2.7) and the newly acquired Pana/Leica 50-200mm f2.8-4.0. As an acknowledgment of the high magnification of the lens I grudgingly pulled an ancient monopod from the cargo areas of America's most coveted high performance car, the Subaru Forster. I used it for almost every shot, flurry of shots, collection of images, etc. Belinda gave me that favored monopod for my birthday in 1980. Remind me to tell you about it. Wow. A forty year old piece of photo gear. 

Old habits die hard so I brought along a Panasonic G9, and the other Pana/Leica lens I use; the 12-60mm f2.8-4.0. It spent the night keeping my cup of red wine company, down near my feet. I just can't leave home for a job without a back-up solution...

The concerts last about an hour and fifteen minutes and the lighting doesn't change, shift, turn other colors, etc. so once you've ranged in your color temperature and hue corrections, and arrived at a good exposure for each part of the stage areas, your brain work is all done and all that's left is a responding to your visceral reaction to the music and the showwomanship of the performer. And Chanel (love the one name thing) is very much a world class singer. She is performing here in Austin this week but heading over to London's West End theater district to star in a production about Tina Turner. That's the big time. 

I over-shot. But that's hardly unusual. I was in the mood so I photographed with raw files instead of Jpegs and the only real difference that makes, which impacts my workflow, is that it takes twice as long for Lightroom to convert from raw to jpeg than from jpeg to "other" jpegs. I was aghast when I looked at the frame count. It was about 1100. I edited down to a bit under 400 for delivery today but I sure left a lot of really good stuff on "the cutting room floor." 

There's no job-ness feeling to the stuff I shoot for Zach Theatre. I decide when I'm going to show up. I decide what I'm going to photograph and what I'll deliver. It's up to me to select cameras, lenses, etc. I can wear my most comfortable shoes. I can get discounted beverages from the bar...

When the show ended and the applause died down I tossed a camera over each shoulder, finished my wine and sealed up my popcorn box. I brought the half full box home thinking I'd munch more popcorn as I edited files today but Ben and Belinda beat me to it and wiped out my popcorn stash last night while I worked, unaware, out in the studio. 

Job overwhelmyness. I've been shooting non-stop this week and tomorrow we'll cap the work week with a full day of product and process/demo photography over at Luminex. I'm working with a fun and kind art director but he wants us to be there by eight. Yes, a.m. I'm working with a new assistant, a guy named Austin who also designs and implements stage lighting at Zach Theatre. I have high hopes that, with a good assistant, I can become ever lazier and still get overpaid. We have a full day ahead of us, working in the belly of corporate America. I am steeling myself for the experience. But there will be breakfast tacos and coffee so all is not bleak.

On Saturday we're doing a three camera video shoot of Chanel's concert back at the theater. Sunday is set aside for seemingly endless postproduction and archiving. I am three jobs behind on photo retouching at this point. Monday we're back at Luminex till 2:30 and then back over to the theater at 5:00 to film Chanel for a different (undisclosable --- at this time) project. We'll be doing a three camera filming adventure on the theater's main stage for this. Tuesday we have a full day booked in our studio by an ad agency to shoot lifestyle portraits and then, Wednesday, I'm back at the theater to shoot video of an entirely different concert. 

At some point I'll put my foot down and command myself to take the rest of the year off. And that will be good because I'm about to write a fabulously nasty diatribe about Adobe ruining my life (very short term) by changing everything I've spent 20+ years learning in Photoshop. Rat Bastards! One day all my adjustment panels are there and the next....poof! they're all gone. Grrr. Hours and hours wasted yesterday. Stay tuned and I'll help you understand my rage at them. But I am still using their products so I guess, ultimately, they win. 

I hope the election stuff doesn't have you mired down in angsty depression. Every body is couching it as the battle royale between socialists and death cult Nazis. But I think that's wrong headed. Democrats aren't socialists...... they're pretty main stream.

Rubber meets road. The Panasonic fz2500 really performs well as a 4K video camera. Hat's off.

We put the fz2500 to the test today at Zach Theatre. I shot b-roll footage of the star of "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill," Chanel,  going through a rehearsal, on stage at the Topfer Theatre. I also shot footage of director, Michael Vader, well.....directing.

I used the fz2500 on top of a monopod for most of my work but near the end I also used the camera handheld in order to get more feeling of motion. We worked under the stage lights and also in dim work light. I was able to dip down to ISO 800 for some of the stage shots (mostly at f4.5-5.6) and I had to scrape up photons with ISO 4,000-6,400 when shooting the director out in the middle of  dimly lit audience seating. Once I disabled the touch screen I had no issues with nose controlled focus points or shifting focus points and everything I shot was either insanely sharp or wildly out of focus (my fault).

I used the UHD, 30 fps, 4k setting with the camera set to 1/60th of a second. While the AF was good I find it much better, at the long end of the lens, to use MF which I have set up to "punch in" when I touch the focusing ring. I'm also using focus peaking to enhance my chances. The camera is much, much, much easier to manually focus than the RX10iii. Much easier.

After the rehearsal, and a quick coffee with one of my video mentors, I rushed back to the studio, opened Final Cut Pro X and started looking at the stuff I'd shot. The "footage" at ISO 800-1,600 was impeccable. Very little noise in the shadows and lots of sharp detail and good saturation. No additional sharpening was necessary.

The image stabilization, in concert with the monopod, was great. The hours I spent shooting at the theater this afternoon helped me gain a new respect for the fz2500 as a video camera. I used the slow zoom controls and was very happy with the smooth, slow zooms I was able to achieve. I trust the focus peaking on this camera more than I do on the Sony RX10iii. And I think the quick menu is highly effective.

I'll be using this camera to shoot my interviews this week with the actor and director and look forward to seeing if the microphone pre-amps play well with external pre-amps and audio recorders. I've got time scheduled tomorrow to do a complete audio run through in the studio in anticipation.

My assessment of this camera? As a low cost/high performance 4K video camera it is exemplary.

Almost forgot about this video. Seems working with gimbals can be fun. All done with Panasonic GH and G cameras. A blast from back in 2020. Just a quick retrospective.

 https://vimeo.com/462396471

Video still frame. Chanel as Tina Turner.

I'm not doing video production these days. It's too time consuming to do right. And I guess my interest is more focused on enjoying photography. But I do really like some of the projects we did just before and right after the onset of the pandemic. This one in particular is a favorite because I think the footage looks good in spite of having to work quickly, without a video crew and with minimal lighting assist from the theater vis-a-vis stage lighting. Shot back in late Summer of 2020.

Currently parceling out microphones, mixers, etc. to young filmmakers. That's fun too.

A few thoughts on loss and learning to live with changes one doesn't like... Oh, and cameras.

Kenny Williams at Zach. The Ghost of Christmas Past.

I have been photographing Christmas plays at Zach Theatre for nearly 30 years. I loved taking pictures of the last three or four years of Zach's amazing and modern interpretation of "Christmas Carol." Many of the cast members have been friends for a long time. The music in the show has always been incredible and mostly sourced from current and recent popular music. It changes year to year.

I would leave the dress rehearsals of the holiday shows with easily more than 1,000 images per show and I'd love 90% of them. I have  photographed the productions with everything from Hasselblad film cameras to the current Lumix cameras, and every size and variety of camera in between. I've seen the images plastered all over newspapers, magazines and community circulars, I've smiled big, toothy grins when I pulled season brochures out of the mail box, and I've hung on to every holiday postcard Zach's marketing crew has produced with my images. 

By this part of the season, in normal times, I would have already photographed a few early rehearsals, some dance rehearsals, and now we'd be getting ready for this Tuesday's big dress rehearsal on the Topfer Stagefor a last non-stop run through before playing to a full house on the day after Thanksgiving. 

But not this year. No, with the increasing spread of Covid-19 everywhere, the Zach board made the decision not to have any indoor shows for the rest of the year, and well into 2021. I didn't think I would take it so hard but I seem to be having trouble accepting that one of my favorite productions of the season, the year, and maybe all time, will not be happening this time season. I won't get to sit in my special, reserved row with a bucket of cameras and boxes of lenses at my side, capturing the magic of it all. I won't get to see the triumph on the faces of the new, young actors as they get over their stage jitters, pull out all the stops and sing a song that makes the audiences jump to their feet to applaud. I won't get to laugh and be amazed by Serrett's incredible make-up art or the costume shop's imaginative costuming. I won't get to cry and get a lump in my throat when some wonderful, young singer stuns us with a particularly poignant version of the song, "Halo" while Bob Cratchit's family visits Tiny Tim's grave....

And I won't get to watch Scrooge have his Christmas Eve night spiritual conversion from selfish and bitter to joyous and generous. A transformation that in some ways never fails to touch our audiences where and when it's most needed. 

Zach Theatre has plans to do an outdoor concert instead. I'm sure they'll do a great job decorating the front of the theater and parts of the plaza. They're planning to have five of the subscriber base's favorite singers. Maybe they'll get lavish and have some dancers as well. But it won't be the cast of 50 or 60 we're used to. We won't have the magnificent stage lights and lighting designs or the perfect audio environment. And we'll be at the mercy of the weather. But if I go into this with just the right attitude (and the right gratitude...) I'm sure I'll leave feeling a little lighter, a good bit happier, and better mentally equipped to make the best of an odd and mostly depressing season/year. 

At least the artists at Zach Theatre are fully embracing the old, live theater motto: The show must go on. 

On the subject of living with loss I've been unable to shake the feeling, completely that my recent medical diagnosis, and the need for a bit of surgery on my beautiful mug is some kind of marker, tossed in by the universe, to prepare me for the realization that it's all down hill from here. I know that it's both true and emphatically not true but at the same time I'm just a bit anxious about....growing older. Of course aging is much preferable to the alternative of dropping dead; but I'm still uneasy about every new spot, wrinkle, stiff muscle and oddly forgotten reason I went back into the house to get something... I watched my father become fragmented and frail, and pass away in a process that came step by step. Nothing sudden and dramatic. Just little blows inflicted one after the other until the math of existence became unworkable. I understand much more clearly now that this will happen to us all. So, now is the time to make the most of whatever sum of time and health we have in our banks. 

Stuff I'm doing to make the other stuff more fun. 

I'm going to be out of commission with stitches on my face and a stern advisory from my future surgeon that I WILL NOT be able to swim for AT LEAST SEVEN DAYS following the procedure. I figure that gives me just enough down time to watch all of Brandon Li's "Unscripted Studio" online workshop. It will be the first time I've paid full price to take an online workshop! Check out Brandon's YouTube channel and I think you'll see why I want access to what's in his brain when it comes to video production, video editing, gimbal work, and production planning. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3stPIuUoCDHG7COfwr0tEA I've been following his channel for a few months now and I'm always impressed by his teaching, his delivery and his attitude. I figure $500 is a decent investment if I can learn bunch of new film making techniques and also keep my mind off the swimming pool for a week or ten days. I'm not writing this because I'm getting anything for free from Mr. Li, I just wanted to let you know where my head is in the moment.... (that's a disclaimer...). 

Since I'll have time to work on technique I took advantage of my good friend, James's gear ADHD to pick up yet another gimbal. He's matriculated upward to the new DJI Ronin RS2 gimbal and he was ready to move his "older" Zhiyun Weebill S gimbal along for pocket change. I could not resist. The Weebill S was last year's "hot" gimbal. 

The Weebill S is lighter, much smaller and at least as capable as the Ronin S I've been playing with, and actually handles a heavier load than the older Ronin or the Zhiyun Crane V2 gimbal I started out with. I've charged the batteries but I'm  putting off working with it until I have time to really figure out all the features. That time should present itself this week as I no longer have parents I need to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for and no place we can think of to go that will be safe both "us" and "them." We're staying safe at home.

I'm renaming "Black Friday" "Weebill S Intro Day." Gimbals are wonderful tools for video production. I shot another video for my friend, Kenny at the beginning of last week and I just spent the weekend editing it. The gimbal made the shooting fun and quick. We did use a tripod....but only for about five minutes.

A few of my art friends have asked me why I've been sliding back into the GH system from Panasonic. The blame falls directly on gimbals. The camera and lens combinations of the GH system make it possible, because of their small size and low weight, coupled with high end video specs, to wring the most out of a good gimbal. I also like them. They are nicely familiar. 

The week ahead. 

We're staying close to home. I'm hitting Barton Springs Pool tomorrow morning, solo, to work on my kick and a few drills to lengthen and slow down my freestyle stroke. Tuesday and Wednesday we've got regular practices at the WHAC pool (my club pool) and then Thursday and Friday we'll celebrate the holiday and maybe Ben and I will do some running together. He's so much faster though that it's more like we're running in the same loose, geographic area at the same time. When Saturday rolls around I'll be back in the pool with the regular crew for our annual "Fat Burner" morning-after feasting marathon swim. However long it takes to burn off a big piece of homemade pecan pie is how long I'll be swimming that morning...

I'll save Sunday's swim as the antidote for all the mashed potatoes and stuffing.

Final note: After having lived in Austin (epicenter of laid back counter culture since forever) for the last fifty years I've finally broken down and bought my first pair of Birkenstock sandals. I went with the classics. The "Arizona." I will proudly wear them with socks as I break them in, and also on any days cooler than 50 degrees. I will be mercilessly teased for being "an old hippie" by my disrespectful, younger and cooler friends but I don't care. I want to discover why every millionaire and billionaire I've met --- who has dropped off the grid and checked out of corporate culture--- ends up swearing by their Birkenstocks (and the ubiquitous wool socks). Probably not recommended as winter foot wear for my friends in Calgary or Toronto...

But they sure feel comfy just hanging out on my feet, under my desk. 

Final, final note.  I am not given to depression or angst in long bouts. Those emotions hit me every once in a while, out of the blue, and today was just one of those times. Putting this down in words and sharing it helped me shift into a better mental space. We'll be alright. All of us. The holidays should be time for gratitude, and sharing our joy and privilege, not wallowing in our own erroneous pathos. Funny how exciting it was to buy and, at least for now, embrace the Birkenstock shoe culture. I blame photographer, Dan Milnor, for the Birks. He talked about them on his VLog over at YouTube and I've been thinking about those zany, German sandals ever since. Don't know Dan? Go here: https://www.youtube.com/user/SMOGRANCH

Jaston Williams as Scrooge. 

CHANEL. As the Ghost of Christmas present and also a soloist.

Roddrick Sandford as Fezziwig, Marley and the Minister.

curious....What does everyone want (camera and lens-wise) for the holidays this year? What't the cool toy?

I'm not doing any top ten lists since we all read the same reviews. Your take is always different from mine though.... Maybe MJ will regale us with some unexpected choices....