TheaterYou production of Pamela

Fantastic performance!  Huge challenge from technical perspective - light color and amount change constantly and unpredictably.  I was lucky enough to work with a director who cares a lot about video production of his play - Val Konovich was directly involved in multi-track edit of the entire recording.  Theater crew was extremely helpful and patient with me, for which I am deeply grateful.  Overall I think this was the best performance I have seen in this theater.

What worked:

• I set in advance white balance and exposure using a calibration target.
• Central camera (GH4) was attached to a column using superclamp and was shooting in 4K which allowed for a clean zoom-in in post.
• I tested new workflow.  Instead of MainConcept MP4 codec I used x264 via DNxHD.  These instructions helped. Almost forgot to correct levels.  x264 seems to be superior for low bitrates (under 10MBps).  I looked into YouTube recommendations and decided on a 2-pass encoding.
• Sony PCM-M10 did the job.  I considered use of Tascam 60DmarkII but found no extra microphones.

What did not work

• GH4 ran out of juice!  This was somewhat unexpected because GH3 runs on a single battery for hours.  I should have turned of LCD, but the camera was positioned so that I could not see the controls.  Note to self: change GH4 battery during the intermission!
• I was shooting GH3 on a tripod set at the top of the bleachers.  Those proved to be noticeably shaky.
• Color matching cameras is still a challenge for me.  Vegas Color Match plugin helps but I am still looking for a better way to accomplish this.  Surely with color-checker and I could expect some magic, the way Davinci does things.  Not Sony Vegas though.
• Canon HF G10 was left unattended.  It was hard for me to guess the direction and as a result majority of the footage was of little use.  Extra operator would help!