Divorce Remarriage with Video Production

• Posted on 15th March 2016
• in divorce & remarriage, entertainment books, Love Story, Video Production & Editing
• by Ben

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Here’s an excerpt from the

divorce remarriage

volume of my memoirs, Waiting for Elizabeth. We did several concerts (and video productions) on our terrace between 1988 and 1992. This particular pair were in June of 1989.

“The start time for the concert was 8:00 PM. I think Kevin [O’Connell] arrived about 3:00 and I helped him set up the lighting. We had a lot of instruments (lights) so… it took him, with a little manual labor from me, about two and a half hours to set the lights. Mind you, he was doing this in full daylight and – being late June – it wouldn’t become completely dark until after the concert began.

“The volunteer set-up crew arrived late afternoon to put out the chairs and rearrange the interior furniture to greet the audience while I arrayed the monitors and switcher on the 6 X 3 dining room table, as we had done for Love is the Power* shoots. We didn’t charge an admission fee but there was a suggested donation of ten bucks. …

* Chapter 26, Circumstances Beyond My Control

“The audience began to trickle in at 7:20 or so and by 8:00 nearly all the seats were filled. 8:10 finally rolled around – no live show in The City ever starts less than ten minutes after the announced time – the lights went up and Richard [Shulman] began to play. Elizabeth walked in singing Let Me Give You Flowers, a song she wrote, turning and greeting people on her way to the small stage at the southwest corner of the terrace.

“She finished the song, made some opening remarks and began to sing Tonight (Westside Story) when everything went black. Electrical power was gone.

“Kevin: I seem to remember that somehow one leg of feeder cable got disconnected by accident, and it took me a few minutes of digging around in the dark to find it. I am not 100% sure that that is the reason, but it’s the best I can do.

ME: I seem to remember, to borrow your phrase, that there was a main breaker that went out and you had to go to the basement… Am I nuts?

Kevin: You may be right. I really don’t remember. Go with what you remember. 

“Conflicts of fuzzy memory notwithstanding, once we were back in business Elizabeth started Tonight over and the rest of the evening went off with no further disasters. In fact it was splendid. And to my amazement Kevin only did one or two lighting tweaks during the intermission. He’s a brilliant lighting director and really knows his business.

“Elizabeth did her usual eclectic mix of show tunes, pop standards, goofy numbers and originals with a Mozart aria providing some vocal fireworks. The music was interspersed with commentary ranging from the funny to the spiritual and, as in all her performances, there was one brief (ten to fifteen minute) guided visualization. Unlike those of many serious “spirit-u-ell” teachers, Elizabeth’s meditations were presented in a light and playful style so that even people who had never experienced such an exercise were engaged and not put off by them.

“Her audiences were as eclectic as her programs. There was a smattering of her spiritual circle but also some neighbors and other acquaintances plus some of my film biz friends who had never seen one of her presentations. And she drew all of them under her spell.

“This was the second full length concert I had switched live as a director and it was exciting and fun and I couldn’t wait to do it again.

“By the way, it may be that the term ‘live-switch’ and its derivatives are self-explanatory but in case they’re not I’ll explain. When you watch something on TV that’s broadcast live it is being ‘live-switched’ which means that a director is looking at a bank of monitors (screens), one for each camera. Through a communication system he tells the camera operators what shot to frame and/or zoom in or out, pan left or right, tilt up or down etc. and then selects which shot goes out to your TV at home by telling the Technical Director (TD), who is operating a device with all the cameras plugged into it (switcher), which camera’s image he wants you to see. This technique is often employed for concerts and other similar events that are being recorded and not broadcast live. The advantage in these cases is that if the director or TD makes a mistake it can be fixed during editing. The goal of the director is to make all the right decisions on the fly and not need to replace any shots. As you may well imagine this requires intense concentration and it is, for me, great fun.

“In the case of Elizabeth’s concerts this concentration and thinking on my feet was amplified by the fact that we had no camera rehearsals. While I was familiar with all her material and had a general knowledge of her movements – when she would leave the stage and move among the crowd – I really did make it up as it went along. Thus, designing shots so as to get an artistic slow dissolve from one moving image to another was an exciting challenge and I feel that I became pretty good at it.

An example from that  concert

“While camera A held a medium shot I told camera B to focus on a closeup then pan right to get the fairy lights out of focus. When that shot was in place I told camera A to begin a slow zoom out and camera B to begin a slow pan left to Elizabeth. While this was happening Russ (TD) executed a very slow dissolve from camera A to camera B.

“Beautiful fun.”

You’ll find more concert and video production tales, not to mention the story of our divorce & remarriage when you click here to get Waiting for Elizabeth.

Tags: Concert Video, Elizabeth Hepburn