How to Shoot Your Own Live Music Video

This is a video I shot at a local music venue called Wired Coffee House. As the house photographer at Wired, I get to do video and photos of some really cool bands from all over the US. The Modest Proposal, a local band from Evansville, is the band featured in this video. Please feel free to check out their BandCamp and listen to some of their really amazing songs! https://amodestproposa1.bandcamp.com/

Now to the fun stuff, how it happened! This video was shot on my Canon EOS 7D with an 85mm fixed lens on 1080p/30fps. The lighting in venues like this are usually very complicated, it took me several years to finally master shooting in manual at these venues. My best advice would be to invest in an external flash and/or external light for photos and video. You can find a cheap one on Amazon for around $30 that will do a decent job. Usually for videos like this I use a steady cam, but that night I shot handheld. When shooting handheld the number one tip I can give you is to control you breathing. This is pretty much the same tactic snipers use before pulling the trigger. When you get into processing your footage after the shoot, the magic takes place. I use Adobe Premiere Pro CC and occasionally After Effects CS6 or CC. In the screen grab below you can see the footage I have placed in my timeline.

This video used relatively simple editing techniques including Color Grading, LUTS, Warped Stabilizer, and some basic cinematic bars and sequences. The link below will give you a short insight into creating a cinematic sequence look.

The best way to learn about shooting video is to go out and do it! I learned that way and so did a lot of others, YouTube was my best friend. Get yourself a camera, and start shooting everything!