How to get the most out of a live concert shoot with a videographer

So you've decided you need to film your live show. Maybe you've seen concert videos on TikTok or Instagram going viral and other artists getting tons of new followers and engagement. Maybe you need a professionally filmed video for booking better gigs and getting paid higher rates. Or maybe you just want to have a professionally shot video of your full show for your fans on Patreon or YouTube. Do you film the whole show or just a few songs? How do you get good audio? How do you get clips that are optimized for social media? There's a ton to go over, so let's jump into how to get the most out of a live concert shoot with a videographer (read till the end, the last tip is the most important).

Tip #1: How to choose the videographer you work with

This part is key. It's also not hard.

Step 1: Look at the content they've shot for artists similar to you and make sure you like it

Do you like the lighting? Do you like the angles and the cinematic movement (if any)? Is it a single camera or multi-angle? If you're looking for full songs, do you like how the final edit came together? If it's for social media, is it shot vertically? How are the engagement metrics? Do you like the color grading? Color grading is HUGE for the emotional feel and especially for social media content. A simple video with a good color grade can go a LONG way.

Step 2: Hop on a call with them and tell them what you want to do

Tell them your concept and what your goals are for the shoot. Make sure they really understand it and pay attention to whether their language makes it clear that they understand the industry and what makes artists successful with content. Also look to see if they pay attention to you, ask good questions, and focus on how the video will help you move closer to your music goals.

This part may seem obvious, but make sure they are actually free on your shoot date. Try to get a feel for how organized they are. When you setup a call, it's a HUGE green sign if they give you a few specific options for date and and time and send you a calendar invite with a zoom or google meet link for the call.

Finally, make sure you know your budget going into the call. Trying to low ball a good videographer will just get you ghosted. Good content costs money, and it's worth it. If you ask for cheap rates, you won't get the videographer's best and you won't be happy with the final result. Worst case, they may get a better paying gig and cancel on you last minute so they can take it. Then you're stuck trying to find someone just before the shoot, which will either be far lower quality for the same money or the same quality for a much higher rate. Not worth it.

Step 3: Pay attention to how they communicate

Do they respond quickly? Do they respond to everything you asked? Most videographers are VERY bad at responding quickly and worse at addressing every question you ask if you're asking multiple questions in the same email.

It's also good to ask others who have worked with them what it was like and if they had good experiences, specifically asking about expected quality vs delivered, communication, and timeliness of delivery of the final content. Contracts are really helpful here, but make sure if you ask for a contract that you're willing to actually read through it and respond in detail. No one wants to be asked to setup a contract only to be ghosted because you aren't actually willing to read and respond to it.

Tip #2: How to get good audio

There are 3 ways to do this.

Option 1: setup a zoom recorder in the back of the room.

This is the easiest option, but it won't give you the best quality because you're going to have more crowd noise and possibly the loud talker right next to the mic. If you position the mic in the sound booth you're going to get the best sound, since you're capturing the same position that the engineer is mixing from. Turn on 32 bit float if you have it to make sure you don't get any peaking. Once you've got it captured, just sync it in post and mute the original audio. This method is free which is awesome (duh).

Option 2: mix camera audio or the zoom recorder with a board mix.

The audio engineer is mixing for the space, which often means that the drums will be louder acoustically in the room and so he won't mix those as loud. This is good for the room, but then the board mix ends up having really low drum volume. This can be the same for anything else that is blasting on stage, like guitars that are amped. This actually works out in your favor though, because this means that the board mix is vocals, keys, tracks, and (possibly) bass heavy, which are usually the hardest to hear in a zoom recorder or camera audio. Now when you combine them in post, you have a track you can turn up to increase the volume of the vocals and anything else you can't hear as well from the zoom recorder. This can turn into a pretty good mix. This option is also (usually) free, as the engineer will usually give you a board mix for free.

Option 3: multitrack the night and send it to a mixing engineer.

This is the more expensive option, as it usually costs $600 - $2k to mix your show depending on the length and who you want to mix it. Plus, live audio engineers usually charge $150 - $200 to do the multitracking, so all in it can easily be $1k - $2.5k to mix your show. The best way to minimize this cost is by multitracking it yourself through Ableton, which you can do by either having a splitter on your rig and sending one set of outputs to your own USB audio device (an XR18 is perfect for this) that's plugged into your laptop, or plug in a laptop to the main board via USB/ethernet. Then inside Ableton, select it as an audio device, create an individual track for each mic, select the input channel for each track, and label the tracks. Make sure you have all your channels enabled in your audio input settings as well.

Tip #3: How to get the most content from the night

You want to maximize the value you get out of paying a quality music videographer for the night. Here's what you need to ask for:

Full songs for Youtube/Patreon

You want these so that fans who are out of town can watch them and the fans who were there can spend hours rewatching them. You can also make these early or exclusive gated access through like a platform like Patreon. This keeps your hardcore fans who support you financially and by sharing your content happy and at the forefront of what you're doing. Pro tip: these are much cheaper if shot with one moving angle instead of 3-4 because you don't need to pay for as much gear or editing time.

Social media reels

You want 30-60 vertical clips from the night. This may be outside the budget as this takes a ton of time to edit, so the best way to get these is to cut the full song videos into 30 second reels on your own. You can do this on your photos app on your phone, or using a free video editing app like LightCut or Adobe Premiere. Make sure the final video is high res in what is outputted, and turn on "upload in highest quality" on Instagram under "more options" when you are about to post.

Booking promo video

One of the best reasons to film your live show is to help you book other shows and get better pay. If you've got a nice video, not only do booking agents, promoters, and venues know what you sound and look like performing live, but they can also see if you bring people (make sure you have a solid audience at the show you're filming). If your video is shot really professionally and you have good audio, they're going to assume you cost more money to book as well, which means they will offer you the higher end of their budgets instead of the bare bones, and makes them more likely to say yes if you ask for better pay as well. You can make this on your own by taking 30 seconds from your top 6 songs and editing them together into a new video. Put your best and most energetic one first to really grab the viewer's attention.

Behind the scenes video

Behind the scenes videos follow the journey of the night and capture load in, sound check, band hanging out backstage or getting food, show highlights, and personal reflections after the show. These videos are unlikely to go viral as they require people to know who you are to be interested in watching, but these are HUGE for fans to be able to connect more deeply with what your experience was on the night. It's a more editing for the videographer, so be prepared to pay more for this, but it's worth it if you can afford it.

Highlight reel

This is probably the "coolest video" because it's a recap hype video with tons of energy that both you and your fans will love. This is a 30-45 second video capturing the biggest and most exciting moments of the night. We're talking 2-3 seconds max on each clip. You'll want to show footage of all band members from multiple angles and good crowd shots and crowd engagement. Use your best hype song (the studio version) behind it to keep the energy high. This type of clip is great for fans but doesn't always do great on social media, but usually requires the videographer to edit it so it tends to be a bit more expensive than it's worth, but if you've got the budget, it's worth doing.

Tip #4: How to optimize your video for social media

This one is pretty simple. You need vertical content for social media, but you also need horizontal content for YouTube and Patreon. The best way to get both is to shoot wide enough that the center of the image can be cropped perfectly for vertical content. Just make sure you keep the subject in the center of the footage, then crop it in your editing software. If you have Adobe Premiere Pro on your computer you can use their auto center effect feature to automatically move the framing so that you stay in the center. Sometimes horizontal video does well on social media, but it is the exception, not the rule.

Tip #5: How to actually get clips that go viral

This is the part that most artists miss. Getting good video and audio quality is super important, but if you aren't actually doing anything particularly compelling on stage it won't matter. The online audience can and will swipe to the next video if what you're doing doesn't make them curious and want to watch almost immediately. There are two keys for this:

Move on stage to keep the energy high and engage the crowd

Most artists don't move much on stage. This may work at a show if you're incredible as an artist, but it's MUCH harder to break through online without visual interest in addition to quality music. Don't overdo it, but you don't want to just stand there either. Move around the stage, rock out with your band mates, and engage the crowd. It'll be awkward at first but once you get good at it you'll see a huge difference both in the response at shows and online.

Design as many moments into your show as you can

Any artist who practices enough can play a song well. Few artists can actually build out a show worth paying attention to. What makes a show worth paying attention to? It's moments. Think of your favorite concerts you've been to. What do remember most about the shows? It's probably a big moment when the band did a syncopated dance move, people were crowdsurfing, an insane visual happened that was synced to the show, or everyone sang the chorus acapella together. These are the types of moments you want to pack into your show because a) they're fun and b) they will help you stop the scroll and get people to watch your video on social media. There's plenty of other things you can do to create moments, like invite audience members on stage to be part of the show, get everyone doing a simple dance move together, or building out a synced visual show using Touch Designer. The coolest one I've seen recently is an artist who dressed up in a pirate outfit and retrofitted a blow up boat to look like a viking boat and crowd surfed in the boat in costume. Absolutely epic.

To sum it all up

If you're going to hire a videographer and spend a bunch of money making video, you want someone who knows what they are doing and can help guide you through the process to get the most out of the night. Whether you're working with a professional or shooting your own content, keep these tips in mind and you'll be on your way to making great social media content in no time.

If you want help filming your show, reach out to us through our contact form and we'll setup a call to see if we can help.

LJR Creative produces cinematic live video for musicians, festivals and events across DC, Maryland and Virginia. See more of our work on our homepage.