Punter videos of the band live!!

[theplumber]

Any thoughts on folk filming your band without permission and sticking it on the net? I ask because in the past in my previous bands this has by and large been a good thing. Seeing your band and hopefully a good night/performance can be a good boost. However,some recent video footage I have seen of other bands have been less than perfect! Yes,I know...folk get caught up in the moment and film when whizzed usually right up someones nose or right in front of a speaker. I suppose it's the times we live in where every single thing we do is captured in the moment for good or bad! Reason I brought this up is I caught a few videos of a band I know from a gig last night. The guy who owns the pub has a habit of taking video footage of the bands playing in his pub and live streaming. Cue armchair viewers watching and dropping comments such as...ooofft a bit off and not enough guitars drop the keyboard player! Sometimes you have to be in the room....maybe as a whizzed up punter to really see how it sounds! I had the chance to be a whizzed up punter at a Glasgow pub a few weeks band seeing a mates band in the afternoon then all of a sudden having to dash for the last train after the pub jam session and another band! Doesn't time fly when you are whizzed! Oh and it all sounded perfectly fine to me and there was no video footage of the bands or me...thankfully! 

[Silvia Bluejay]

Unfortunately being filmed on a crappy mobile phone is now a fact of life. As you say, landlords tend to do that, so they can livestream on Facebook, and that's as much for their own advertising as the band's. And if they do that, their punters feel free to do the same. There's no stopping the trend at this stage. Only at a wedding - your own - can you perhaps have the temerity to ask people not to film; even in that case, though, they may disobey, or  secretly think you're bride/groomzilla.

 

Our solution is to have our own videos of each performance, and flood the internet with those! At least in the case of the rock n' roll band, entering its name in Google, or on Facebook, Youtube or Instagram, will bring up the official pages where we post our videos of often the same songs as streamed by the punters - plus many others! - but with better quality audio recording and multiple camera angles. Also, we post the whole songs as opposed to snippets, which should get the algorithms to favour them when creating the results page for a search.

[theplumber]

I have seen pro made studio based videos of bands or location shoots with bands playing along to a pre recording backing track. It does show the band in a good light if made corectly but I do like to see a decent live video even if it does come from a punter. If it's any good it can be used to your advantage!

[Lozz196]

The last year I played Rebellion (2019) a lot of people videod the gig so our singer contacted them, asked their permission to use the vids, then pieced the whole performance together with the best footage from each. 

[Silvia Bluejay]

24 minutes ago, theplumber said:

I have seen pro made studio based videos of bands or location shoots with bands playing along to a pre recording backing track. It does show the band in a good light if made corectly but I do like to see a decent live video even if it does come from a punter. If it's any good it can be used to your advantage!

We only make live video - we use no studio shot footage at all, with the only exception of Lockdown-time Green Screens on the band's originals for their EP.

[wateroftyne]

It's a fact of life - like it or not, there's nowt you can do about it other than politely ask people nicely not to do it.

 

...but then you'd look a bit prima donna-ish.

[chris_b]

There's a guy who films all the bands at a club we play. He uses professional gear and turns out a pretty good video. He also give the bands approval, which is unique. Unfortunately he always sets up in front of the guitarist which means the bass is always in the background.

 

I also know a band who had a "melt down" on stage and had to ask anyone filming not to put it on the internet!

 

I barely get through a song without doing something I'd rather forget, let alone a whole night, so I'm ambivalent about these videos. On the other hand, they show you what the audience sees and hears, so they can be a useful learning tool.

[uk_lefty]

You can't stop it, and why would you? Punter sees something interesting and videos it... Then hopefully they whack it up online and tag the band in, traffic to your own pages develops and you might get more interest from further afield. It would be nice if people did post it and tag the band in so you can choose whether to keep it or not but usually there's a few people filming and then you, maybe even they, never actually see that film played back. We've made twenty second advertising clips using stitched together mobile footage and recordings from gigs made by people we know who have shared them with us. So the viewer gets multiple camera angles, perhaps from multiple gigs, alongside a good quality audio that is also recorded live, every box ticked.

[theplumber]

2 hours ago, chris_b said:

There's a guy who films all the bands at a club we play. He uses professional gear and turns out a pretty good video. He also give the bands approval, which is unique. Unfortunately he always sets up in front of the guitarist which means the bass is always in the background.

 

I also know a band who had a "melt down" on stage and had to ask anyone filming not to put it on the internet!

 

I barely get through a song without doing something I'd rather forget, let alone a whole night, so I'm ambivalent about these videos. On the other hand, they show you what the audience sees and hears, so they can be a useful learning tool.

I was in a band and the guitarist and singer nearly came to blows one night...this lasted over the course of the gig which was cut short thankfully! Someone filmed it and for a couple of hours it was on the net! Not a good advert for the band! I managed to see it recently as the singer in a recent band I am in is super nosey and heard about it almost straight away and saved it!...its like that in Glasgow/Paisley. I seem to be telling the guys to calm down and get back to the music! The drummer is just looking down at his snare........ Even Harry Hill would not have shown it!!

[CJPJ]

2 hours ago, chris_b said:

I barely get through a song without doing something I'd rather forget, let alone a whole night, so I'm ambivalent about these videos. On the other hand, they show you what the audience sees and hears, so they can be a useful learning tool.

We played The Chain a few months back in a pub and I utterly screwed up *that bit*. I had nightmares for weeks thinking it was going to go viral on YT or something. It didn't and I'm not searching now 🤣

[gjones]

It can be a bit disheartening when you see a video of your band, recorded on a mobile phone, with no bottom end, that sounds tinny, unbalanced and distorted.

 

A few months ago we were recorded at a live gig, onto multitrack, by an excellent engineer. The recording was then mixed and streamed and I was astounded at how great everything sounded.

 

I was so used to those awful mobile phone videos of the band, that I thought we sounded rubbish live.

Edited May 15, 2022 by gjones