I first met Daniel Scalzo in Chicago when he attended my ICA training class in 2018. As a DP he had fantastic tour stories of working with notable artists like Pearl Jam, Peter Gabriel, Sting and Florence and the Machine. My parting comment was if you ever get down to Australia on a tour I’d love to see your workflow.
Jump to late 2018 and Daniel reached out and said he would be shooting the Florence and the Machine Brisbane gig at my favourite venue the Riverstage.
“Would you like a backstage pass?”
Daniel first got the call from Flo and the Machine a couple of years ago after they loved his live concert work with Pearl Jam. The filmic Pearl Jam look was a collaboration with directors Mark Haney and Blue Leach alongside Lighting Designer Rob Sinclair.
They wanted to get away from the video feel of many concert big screens, by being creative with the look and the live switching of the images.
Daniel has his own camera profiles that he loads to every camera on tour. This combined with him live grading on the fly all cameras backstage, gives the footage a more 25p non clipped filmic feel.
The cameras were four manned Sony HXC-100’s and 2 “robotic” PTZ Panasonic AW-HE130’s controlled with a Panasonic RP-50 controller. It was centered around a 2-ME Sony MVS-3000 vision switcher. The pictures were sent to a single 10m by 10m projector just to the left of the main stage.
I was there on the first of 2 nights so it was Daniel’s first chance to see the projector. During the band’s rehearsal it looked cooler than the grading Sony monitor and to our eyes looking at the front of the stage. Daniel could obviously adjust the grade to compensate for the color temperature difference of the projector, but that would then offset the color temperature being recorded, so wasn’t an option. We were also battling a setting sun so it was an interesting challenge. During the support act we managed to tweek the projector closer to Daniel’s OLED in the control room.
During the main concert I spent time in the control room watching the amazing live color correction and camera switching from both Daniel and director Corby Anderson. I also moved around backstage and out front with the audience so I could appreciate their work on the big screen from many different angles.
It was a great experience to go backstage and to see just how much work goes into what you see on the big screen at a concert.
