Playing with interesting lighting techniques is a fantastic way to add energy to videos. We had a blast experimenting with techniques alongside Electric Violinist Razzvio. Razz is primarily a performer and looping artist but has been incorporating more lighting technology into her performance and DJ sets. So we decided to set up a filming day using pre-programmed light shows for her new promotional material.
Hot Dogs & Risoto - Leche Malo
The Setup
For this shoot, we thew in the kitchen sink for lighting – every light we owned was added to the mix. Here’s the final lighting tally:
- 2 ADJ movers
- 2 Martin mini movers
- 2 Chauvet FX pars
- 2 Chauvet DJ Colorband PixM bars
- 2 ADJ Ellipsoidal lights
- 4 Chauvet pin spots
- 4 Par Cans
All the color wash lights were hooked into a DMX chain and sent to a DMXIS box. Razz programmed the lighting show over the course of two days in Ableton using the DMXIS software to tempo match and move to her music.
The Event
The night of the shoot we set the cameras in a similar pattern to our Leche Malo event, taking into account Razz’s standing position and more active performance. In order to help her keep an eye on her blocking so she didn’t stray out of frame we gave her a floor median line to use as her “center”.
Our par cans and ellipsoidal lights were used for a front wash but we were careful not to wash out the color schemes for the effects lights. We also introduced a Haze Machine in order to catch the moving beams of light which made a huge difference in perceiving the lighting changes and different colors.
Razz was the primary audio technician and recorder since her Ableton programming was designed around the show. We did two passes of 3 songs and selected the best pass to use as the final cut. Since the songs were meant to be live we didn’t want to cut to a different version unless absolutely necessary.
We felt very happy with how different the final look was to our previous session, even though the backdrop and stage was the same. Adding in the dramatic lighting certainly won’t fit every artist but definitely adds an element of energy and visual interest to a solo performance.