98 Productions Blog

What A Night – Trevor Hall & Passafire

Thursday night, as spring break began, we ventured down to Jacksonville Beach, Florida (aka Jax Beach) to cover Trevor Hall and Passafire‘s performance as they opened for the Wailers at the classic venue: Freebird Live! The show was off the charts, beginning with Passafire’s powerhouse fusion of Reggae and rock sending the crowd into a rhythmic craze and followed by Trevor Hall’s anthemic set, with one of the greatest percussion performances ever by Chris Steele. Again, Chris is right up there with Ray Cooper and Doudou N’Diaye Rose in my books. Passafire’s set left everyone wanting more! These two acts are MUST SEES live!

Covering a live event like this is always a challenge, both for image and sound. Les, the club’s audio engineer set us up with the live recording, feeding the mix from the board into 1 of our 4 cameras capturing the event. As every performance in itself is a one time event, we used four cameras running sync to capture the various angles. I would like to have 20 next time, but four is a great start! Every shoot usually reveals its own unique unexpected challenge, and so we used the Panasonic HVX 200 cameras for their versatility.

When it comes to filming live concerts I am a huge fan of Hamish Hamilton, the director of many of the U2 concert DVDs. Capturing the essence of a live performance and recreating that on film (now video) is an art in and of itself. Director Sophie Muller‘s “Sade: Lover’s Live” (produced by Oil Factory) is one of my top favorite concert DVDs and Danny Clinch‘s “Imagine In Cornice” concert DVD of Pearl Jam‘s Italy tour is beautifully shot and put together and an inspiration for any filmmaker. As a kid I was always a fan of “The Song Remains The Same“, with all the fantasy interludes amidst the bare bones Madison Square Gardens performance. One of my favorite live performances captured on film is director Mike Nichols‘ “Gilda Live”. I always remember one of the opening shots in the film happening from Gilda’s feet level, looking from behind her heels out at the audience. In one quick moment Nichols puts you right in Gilda’s ‘shoes’ (no pun intended). Of course Julian Temple‘s (another one of my favorite music video directors) live concert documentary “Glastonbury” is incredible!

Well, now we’re off to post, to put together these two very special 45 minute sets. Let’s see what we come up with.

Photography by Sarah Milton for 98 Productions, LLC.