Case Study: Orchestra Video recording

We filmed a live performance of a cello concerto and produced a high-definition Blu-ray recording. The piece was performed by Catherine Hewgill and the Verbrugghen Ensemble, featuring some of Australia’s finest musicians – many from the Australian Symphony Orchestra.

The DVD was created for a Japanese corporate partner, so the music was inspired by a traditional haiku – a three lined poem – about a frog. To reflect both cultures, we projected uniquely Australian artworks behind the performers during the concert.

Unlike typical music video shoots, where musicians mime to a pre-recorded track, this ensemble could only rehearse and perform together on a single day at Sydney’s Trackdown Studios. That meant we had to capture both the music and visuals live, for the entire piece. To meet this challenge, we approached the production like a multi-camera live concert recording.

We deployed seven cameras, operated by four camera operators, supported by a camera assistant and a data wrangler to manage the large volume of HD footage.

One camera provided timecode sync across all units, including the music engineer’s audio recording, ensuring everything stayed perfectly aligned.

Editing was a complex task. Since every take was recorded live, we had to align all footage to match the final music edit. The video was built from 43 distinct sections – shot at different times throughout the day – each broken down into edits across seven camera angles.

Watch the video snippet below to see it in action.