Mastering the Art of Live Session Music Videos: Lessons from 100+ Releases at Sagehouse Live
My name is Duncan Kurtz, and I serve as the Owner and Director of Photography at Sagehouse Live, a live-session music video platform based out of Orlando, Florida. Alongside me is my colleague and co-owner, Adam Sage, who is our Executive Producer. We have had the privilege of releasing over 100+ live session videos. Through this extensive experience, we've gathered invaluable insights into what makes a live session successful. Here are the top tips and tricks we've learned by making real mistakes, so you don't have to.
1. Prioritize Pre-Production Planning
Thorough planning is essential. Have the artist send the list of songs you're recording ahead of time. Real live sessions are not staged videos, so for the most part, the take that's best for audio has to be the take for the video. Sometimes you'll have certain shots from previous takes that will line up well, but we try to avoid this unless necessary.
2. Give Your Set Character
Fans want to see their favorite artists in an environment that feels natural for them to be in. Using props, lighting, and background elements to enhance the atmosphere without overshadowing the performance. It's the little things, in the background of our set, you'll see retro videogame consoles, wacky sculptures, and even a baby wearing sunglasses! It's not just about having "the most cinematic visuals", but having something fun, that fans don't feel is manufactured or forced.
3. Sound is King
Having the right mics, recording space, acoustic treatment, and approach is everything in recording live audio!
You might have noticed, but our space is treated floor to ceiling with acoustic treatment. Underneath every painting on the wall is an acoustic panel, and they extend far outside of the sight of the cameras. The tall ceilings and abnormal shape of our space ensure that loud drums don't reflect in unfavorable ways.
When it comes to mics, all the vocalists get a super-cardioid mic to mitigate bleed, end of question. The rest is up to taste and preference.
The most controversial thing we do, but can be directly attributed to our industry-leading live sound recording is not having amps in the room. The only acoustic sounds in the room are vocals and drums. We either record the DI guitar or place the amps in a different room and send that to their in-ears.
Make sure each performer in the act has a quality in-ear mix! Listen to their feedback and make sure they can hear themselves and their band members properly. A quality in-ear mix will help them play a confident performance, which directly translates to how comfortable artists will appear on camera.
4. 3 Dynamic Angles, 2 Static Angles
Strap in, this one's a doozie.
To keep the video exciting and engaging, you really need to have good coverage of the performance. Here is a set diagram of our recording space.
Refer to this diagram.
Cameras 1, 2, and 3 are our dynamic angles. Cameras 4 and 5 are our static angles.
Cameras 1 and 2 for the most part are focused on vocals, they have great angles and ample room to move around to hunt down shots as needed. We use gimbals, but handheld, easy rig or shoulder rigs are great options, too. The key is keeping your dynamic cameras stable, reliable, and consistent. This does come at the cost of less performative shots, but you can still get very reliable and engaging shots from these angles.
Camera 3 is focused almost solely on instrumentalist details. This locked-down tripod angle makes AMAZING cutaways when some amazing riff happens. This angle has also saved our butt many times when cameras 1 and 2 don't have a usable shot and it would feel weird to swap to a static angle.
Camera 4 is a wide shot of the whole band and is great for several reasons. It's our least cut-to-angle, but is essential when we need it. Whether it's a slow push-in or a hectic scene that's too difficult to track, this angle has saved us countless times where we otherwise would have had an unusable section.
Camera 5 is solely for the drummer, who is often responsible for setting up transitions to a new section of a song (i.e. pre-chorus to chorus, verse to chorus, etc...). In the past, we've lodged a fisheye camera in the drum-set and this has been a super engaging shot. We opted out of this recently because it's really jarring to see a fisheye lens. Getting fun and funky with this angle is very helpful and breaks up the edit nicely. If we had the budget, I would be hiring a handheld cam op to just get great, impactful footage of the drummer, but vocals/lyrics are king.
5. Foster a Comfortable Environment
From the moment the artist walks in the door, you are no longer the producer, director, or whatever fancy title you have. You are now a customer service professional. We set up everything that doesn't require the artist beforehand so that the second they arrive, we can focus on getting to know them and making them feel at home. When you work with artists, you're working with strong personalities, and you need to make sure they feel free to be themselves. We'll have some light music playing as they load in to keep the environment feeling casual and fun.
It's often overlooked, but make sure you have snacks available for the artists. I usually opt for fresh fruit, coffee, and enough water bottles to go around. You don't want to give them anything dry that might affect vocalists' ability to perform (ask me how I know this).
When going over your recording process with artists, it's important to have already broken down conversational barriers, so that when they step in front of the lights and are told what to do, the stakes feel so much less high. In turn, this will reduce their anxiety and lead to better performances, which make better videos.
7. Keep the Crew Small but Efficient
I cannot emphasize this enough. Make sure it's abundantly clear to every party involved that these recordings are NOT social gatherings. When you introduce more people, you introduce more variables and hazards. This includes people standing in the way, distracting talent, distracting crew, making noise, and wanting to overstep and involve themselves in the process. We only allow the crew, the artist, and the artist's team. We also actively try to limit how many people the artist's team can bring. These are often touring musicians on tight timelines, and we need every last second to be dedicated to the production of the session, not entertaining people and harboring distractions.
8. Learn from Every Session
After post-production has concluded, take the time to review with your crew the pain points of the session. You often don't know what the problem areas are until you finish post-production. Not only that, but post-production often finishes long after on-site production has wrapped.
In these reviews, I often point out:
How to get better-quality shots without sacrificing consistency
Things to double-check before we hit record
Bad tendencies of dynamic camera operators
Framing preferences
Focus points for their role/angle
Without reviewing, your crew will never learn from their mistakes. It's also very helpful to export a video with specific instances of their mistakes on video to provide them with a visual representation of your feedback.
Summary
Adam and I have dedicated ourselves to mastering the art of live-session music videos at Sagehouse Live. Our journey of recording over 100 session releases has been a testament to our preparation, creativity, and continuous learning/self-reflection. Every live session will have its flair/personality, and this is not meant to be the catch-all guide, but rather our approach, and the reasoning/lessons behind it.
If you'd like to discuss your live-session recordings or would like to book a consultation, email me at duncan@momentfl.com. This is my life's passion, and I'm always open to sharing my insight and working with other industry professionals.
Check out our most recent session featuring "The Stews", a rock band with a massive sound. The Stews - Lately / How it Ends
