Digital Video magazine — January 2013
RED Epic at Red Rocks: Capturing the Mumford & Sons Concert Film

Last October, the British folk rock band Mumford & Sons announced The Road to Red Rocks concert film, to be distributed by Pulse Films. Featuring footage from the last two concerts of the group’s Gentlemen of the Road tour, which ended at the celebrated Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Golden, Colo., the documentary was released internationally last November and arrives in the U.S. on January 22.

Cinematographer Giles Dunning, who also shot the Mumford & Sons 2012 tour documentary Big Easy Express, as well as LCD Soundsystem: Shut Up and Play the Hits and The White Stripes documentary Under Great White Northern Lights, chose RED EPIC cameras outfitted with Canon L series and Angenieux Optimo zoom lenses to capture live concert footage for the film.

“We shot the LCD Soundsystem Madison Square Garden show on the Arri Alexa, which gives a great image but you’re stuck with these giant lenses, which for concert situations can be quite confining,” Dunning comments. “It worked for the LCD show because we had rolling tripods for many of the cameras. That show was four hours long, and those cameras are heavy and clumsy, so everyone traded off – you ‘d do a section on handheld and a section on sticks because there was no way you could do four hours of handheld.”

For the 90-minute Mumford & Sons shows, Dunning deployed nine cameras shooting a combination of 2K and 5K widescreen footage. “The beauty of the Epic in this situation is that it can shoot 2K, which means you can shoot 16mm lenses,” he enthuses. “Three of the cameras were shooting 2K widescreen, and three of them were shooting 5K widescreen with Angenieux Optimo zoom lenses. And then there were three handheld cameras set up with Canon mounts using the Canon L series lenses.” (Read more…)