Increase the artistic nature of your concert films

October 8th, 2009 : John Kary

The Designis.ms blog recently made a post showing the work of Vincent Moon and his work doing, “Take Away Shots,” where he films bands performing on-location. The style of filmmaking is very similar to that of Cinéma vérité, where what appears on screen is largely unaltered from how it occurred. The audio is usually captured [...]

Sigur Ros post feature-length concert film on YouTube

March 10th, 2008 : John Kary

Sigur Ros have posted their feature-length concert film on YouTube for free viewing in its entirety. You can view the entire film here. (PS: It’s about 90-minutes long.) Some might say, yay, great, free! But if you saw the HD trailer I talked about earlier, the YouTube video just can’t compete with the real deal. [...]

Grand Central phone service rocks

March 3rd, 2008 : John Kary

Start-up company Grand Central was bought-out by Google last year. You may have heard last week about how Google Gave All San Francisco Homeless a Free Voicemail through Grand Central. Well, Google recently opened the service as a private beta, and we were lucky enough to get in on it. So what does it do? [...]

5 Reasons You Should be Using Flash Video

February 13th, 2008 : John Kary

The goal of every website is to provide content and services to its visitors. You probably look at your website daily from your computer to make sure it looks great. But not all web browsers display the web in the same way. Little nuances between browsers can sometimes make sites unusable. Things get even more [...]

How concert films can make more money for musical artists

January 5th, 2008 : John Kary

While 2007 CD sales were down 14% from 2006, digital downloads were up 50%. Record labels continue to struggle to develop new distribution models that take advantage of the digital revolution. Over the last year, fans have shown they are willing to sink money into digital intellectual property. The success of digital audio in 2007 [...]

The Death of High Fidelity Music

December 29th, 2007 : John Kary

Rolling Stone recently ran an article called The Death of High Fidelity: In the age of MP3s, sound quality is worse than ever. The article puts the buzz of “The Loudness War” of the audio enthusiasts into a mainstream magazine. While there have been plenty of articles already published in more audio-enthusiasts magazines, this article [...]

Concert Film: Sigur Ros – Heima

December 3rd, 2007 : John Kary

If you haven’t heard of the band Sigur Ros, they make some of the most beautiful music. Hailing from the beautiful countrysides of Iceland, their music itself provokes visual imagery. Listening to their music is like a film for the ears. The band recently did a small unannounced tour around Iceland, playing small towns all [...]

How to pull off taping a live concert video, Part 3 – Video Production

November 25th, 2007 : John Kary

Capturing great quality video at a concert is more difficult than setting up a camera wherever you can find space and shooting. You have to navigate around the sea of people, find safe spots to setup your cameras and keep the drunk guy without his shirt on from spilling his beer on you after telling [...]

Social Byproducts of Media Convergence

November 15th, 2007 : John Kary

We have been hearing it since the days of dial-up: The Internet is the future of… everything. I am hard-pressed to find anything still unaffected by the connectivity of the Internet. As active members of the media creation industry, it is important to keep up on exactly what is happening today in our world. This [...]

How to pull off taping a live concert video, Part 2 – Audio Production

October 17th, 2007 : John Kary

One of the most important aspects of a live concert is the sound quality. Whether it’s the fluidity and balance of the mix that your ears perceive at the show, or in our case, the accurate reproduction of that sound in the 1′s and 0′s of your recording. In Part 2 of this guide on [...]

How to pull off taping a live concert video, Part 1 – Overview

October 2nd, 2007 : John Kary

With the release of Emery’s “I’m Only a Man” today, featuring a Bonus DVD and 5 Live Acoustic tracks produced by Titus Films, it’s like having another child. Not that I currently have any (ever…?), but I can bet it’s like seeing your son or daughter walk across the stage at graduate. All posterity aside, [...]