video monitor of the orchestra conductor

[jneveaux]

Not sure if this is the best thread for this, but ...
I am working on the set design for Annie Get Your Gun. The design puts the orchestra upstage of the main acting areas, where the performers will not have a direct line of sight to the conductor - unless they face upstage most of the time.
I have worked in the past with shows where the conductor was put on video camera with a monitor or monitors placed at the lip of the stage or on a (near) balcony face.
In anticipation of protests from performers and musicians alike, I want to have as much information about the possible set up as possible for my next production meeting.
Has anyone worked out a set up like this recently that didn't require expensive equipment, but could be done with equipment readily available in a high school environment. (And how well did it work?)
Any input or suggestions are appreciated.

[NickJones]

Originally Posted by jneveaux

Not sure if this is the best thread for this, but ...
I am working on the set design for Annie Get Your Gun. The design puts the orchestra upstage of the main acting areas, where the performers will not have a direct line of sight to the conductor - unless they face upstage most of the time.
I have worked in the past with shows where the conductor was put on video camera with a monitor or monitors placed at the lip of the stage or on a (near) balcony face.
In anticipation of protests from performers and musicians alike, I want to have as much information about the possible set up as possible for my next production meeting.
Has anyone worked out a set up like this recently that didn't require expensive equipment, but could be done with equipment readily available in a high school environment. (And how well did it work?)
Any input or suggestions are appreciated.

Hey, yes it's easy to do, you use your normal camcorder, and connect it like you would to your TV (But on record instead of play), but instead of your TV, you connect it through a long RCA/Multicore/XLR (We run ours through our multi core with a simple XLR-RCA adapter) and plug it into the TV screen, projectors don't work great on stage. Make sure you find a camera that doesn't automaticly turn itself off if it doesn't record in X amount of time. I was Vision Mixing a show a while ago, and a camera went down, (long story) long story short, we had a backup, but we hadn't set it to not automaticly turn off, so the feed would constantly drop out. So make sure you have that set. If you want to run it to more than one monitor, you can split it, if your TV's have a TV in and a TV out function, then you can daisy chain them together, if not, then you can split the feed, but splitting it into more than 2 would mean that you loose quality if you don't use something like a distribution amplifier.
Cheers,
Nick

[ruinexplorer]

Originally Posted by NickJones

Hey, yes it's easy to do, you use your normal camcorder, and connect it like you would to your TV (But on record instead of play), but instead of your TV, you connect it through a long RCA/Multicore/XLR (We run ours through our multi core with a simple XLR-RCA adapter) and plug it into the TV screen, projectors don't work great on stage. Make sure you find a camera that doesn't automaticly turn itself off if it doesn't record in X amount of time.
Nick

A work around for the time out of your camcorder is to put in a tape and actually record. This can be a junk tape that you can rewind and record over and over again. Of course you can pick up security cameras for fairly cheap online or at some big box electronic stores.

For what it's worth, I don't recommend using audio cables for video purpose. The cables are made differently and do not pass the signal well. Since this is only for performers and not for the audience, you can probably get away with the quality of picture that you get with audio cable.

[rochem]

I will be SMing a show here in a couple months for which I plan to run a conductor video feed from the pit to SL where I will be calling the show. I am just going to use my home camcorder on a tripod and run composite video through an RCA cable from the camcorder to the back of the television. What do you mean by "on record instead of play"? Wouldn't the television pick up whatever the camera sees, regardless of whether it's actually recording onto a tape or not?

I'm also curious about how well XLR cables would work running composite video through them, then converting to RCA at each end. Is the image quality good enough for something like a conductor cam, or would it be better to run it through a really long RCA cable?

[rochem]

Originally Posted by jneveaux

I have worked in the past with shows where the conductor was put on video camera with a monitor or monitors placed at the lip of the stage or on a (near) balcony face.

I would definitely recommend putting your video monitors on the balcony rail position, as opposed to the front of the stage. As an actor, you have to be keeping an eye on the conductor while still looking out front and not right at him. With the conductor right there, it's fairly easy to watch him out of the corner of your eye, but with a screen I would guess that you'd have to pay a little more attention to it. By keeping them out front and high, you put them around where the actors should be singing to anyways, instead of forcing them to look down at the stage.

[Raktor]

Originally Posted by rochem

I would definitely recommend putting your video monitors on the balcony rail position, as opposed to the front of the stage. As an actor, you have to be keeping an eye on the conductor while still looking out front and not right at him. With the conductor right there, it's fairly easy to watch him out of the corner of your eye, but with a screen I would guess that you'd have to pay a little more attention to it. By keeping them out front and high, you put them around where the actors should be singing to anyways, instead of forcing them to look down at the stage.

Seconded. We put ours on the lighting rigging positions inside the dress circle.

Two cheap TVs hooked up to a CCTV camera mounted on the conductor's music stand or nearby, with the TVs set to black and white, and with low brightness (otherwise you'll have a grumpy LD).

[NickJones]

Yeah, make sure the audience can't see it though, TV's are always distracting. As for running video through XLR, I know there is a big thread about it, personally, I do it all the time through a 30m Multicore, and it works fine for me, it's amped at both ends and works fine for me. Still, that's just me.

[Chris Chapman]

I did a production of "The Mikado" with a buried Orchestra like this. We got around it by projecting the Conducter against the back wall of the house, above the audience. The image was big enough for the cast to see, and it was inobtrusive so the Audience never caught on.

That way you are just taking the video out of the cam, running the cable to the projector, and viola, done. You need a good point in your catwalk to project from though.

[lieperjp]

When we did this for backstage video monitors as a tempoarary set up, we just used an old camera with an RCA out, ran it through a VCR to boost the signal, then used the coax out on the VCR to run it to the tv's, since we had a really long coax cable lying around. When it got to where we needed it to go, we just used a cheap coax splitter you can find at any story that sells tvs to split it to the three tvs it needed to be run to. Pretty easy and it only cost us $5 or so for the splitter, everything else we had lying around. Check to see what you have lying around that you could make use of.

[jneveaux]

Thanks for all the suggestions. Now I'm off to see what cabling and equipment I can scrounge up to put one of these methods to work.
JN