4K in the Front Row

Peter Gabriel's show was shot using 11 F55s

With the first 4K concert film ‘Muse - Live At Rome Olympic Stadium’ released into cinemas on 5 November and the recent Peter Gabriel So: Back to Front tour filmed in 4K at London’s O2 Arena, the format is fast moving into the live production mainstream

 Sony worked with Serpent Productions to produce what is still the largest scale 4K multi-camera live concert recording yet attempted of the Muse gig last July in front of 60,000 fans. The shoot used 16 Sony PMW-F55 cameras, while the recent Gabriel concerts used a maximum of 11. That’s not to say that Gabriel’s concerts were in any way the poor relation, though.
 
“It was a great learning experience for all of us, both engineers and crew,” says Hamish Greig, Technical Director at outside broadcast specialists CTV who shot the Gabriel gig for production company Done + Dusted. “I think we used pretty much every recording format possible during those two nights.”
 
Indeed, Greig reels off an impressive list of equipment that was used alongside the 11 F55s, including Cabrio lenses, Primes, optical converters and ‘plenty of toys’ such as dollies, jibs and tracks, all of which he reckons will stand the company in good stead once 4K production becomes more widespread. “It was a good learning curve,” he says, going on to namecheck both Sony and PG for their support. “We’re now very confident that we can deliver on 4K projects.”
 
Two days were spent prepping at base, before both the soundcheck and main shows were recorded over two consecutive nights: seven cameras used on the Monday, eleven on the Tuesday. It was shot in 23.98 and all recorded in RAW 4K apart from a single hothead contained in a descending part of the lighting rig.
 
“You have to plan your workflow carefully,” he advises, “but after that most of the tools are out there now that you can do pretty much what you want.”
 
The Gabriel show is being post produced in LA with a view to a spring 2014 release, while the Muse gig will be released on DVD and Blu-ray at the start of December.

See the Muse 4K concert trailer after the break