S-Cinetone for a concert

Great opportunity to use S-Cinetone for a School Band Concert. On May 18th, 2023, I captured my daughter’s end-of-year concert on video. Bonham Middle School’s Band program consistently excels, earning numerous awards from the University Interscholastic League (UIL). The entire family was filled with excitement as we anticipated her final concert of the year. This event presented an ideal opportunity to test the effectiveness of Sony’s new S-Cinetone Picture Profile settings. S-Cinetone, specifically tailored for a school band concert, should not only seamlessly integrate with the dynamic performance but also facilitate a rapid post-production workflow, ensuring timely sharing of cherished memories.

Challenges using S-Cinetone for a School Band Concert

Bright overhead lighting, while seemingly sufficient, can often present significant challenges for video recording. The intense illumination can create stark contrasts and dramatic lighting variations, making it difficult to capture a balanced and nuanced image. To overcome this, it’s crucial to employ video recording settings that utilize a wide dynamic range. This capability allows the camera to capture a greater range of light and shadow detail, providing flexibility during post-production to effectively adjust exposure and bring out subtle nuances in the darker areas while maintaining highlights.

Furthermore, ensuring high-quality audio is paramount. Given the potential for loud audience reactions or enthusiastic band performances, it’s essential to record with a safety channel. This precautionary measure helps to prevent unwanted audio distortion or clipping, safeguarding the integrity of the audio recording.

Lastly, maintaining steady camera operation is critical for achieving smooth and professional-looking footage. While handheld shooting can offer a sense of dynamism, it’s often advisable to utilize a tripod to minimize camera shake and ensure stable, high-quality recordings.

Quick turnaround for video production.

For this event, I used Sony’s New S-Cinetone Picture Profile on Sony A7iv camera. Not only does it provide a straight out of camera video, the video may only need slight  editing.  Therefore, this picture profile fullfils quick turnaround video production projects.

Video production can provide original content for your website, social media, and advertising. Video production is an important part of your marketing, giving a face and voice to your business and providing high value for your brand.

What is S-Cinetone?

It’s  Sony’s picture profile built to resemble the Sony VENICE’s celebrated cinematic look renowned for optimising skin tones and providing a film-like color to videos. What’s unique about this profile is that it allows quick and effortless production of video content directly from the camera without much need for post-production color-grading. An experienced videographer can then concentrate on getting the right shot, establish the correct mood, and make sure the scene looks great.

Very happy with the results.

During the event, I made sure the video recording had optimal white balance. Made sure that I didn’t blow out highlights and at the same time allow for enough detail in the shadows. I used a safety channel for the audio. The band and audience can get quite loud and a safety channel can make sure you have great sound and no clipping. Then after importing the video, I only had to do slight exposure adjustments and coloring. To conclude, the video only needed a slight increase in exposure and a little less warm white balance. Obviously, very happy using Sony’s S-Cinetone for a school band concert.

At Lightning Bilt Creative Studio, we get great opportunities from clients, friends, and familty to test out settings and techniques. This then becomes a newly acquired skill that can be very useful for my clients and their project needs.

Got a Video Project? Contact us today!

// Equipment used: Sony a7IV, Small Rig cage, Sony 70-200mm, Rode Videomic NTG

Written by Ben Raigoza, at Lightning Bilt.