When my local OG announced he’d be opening for this legendary act on 3 Ontario dates, I hit him up about coming and shooting it. He told me he actually learned about this act through me way back in like 2012 when I was a huge fan. He’d been working with this promoter who has been establishing their own Ontario and Canada route, and I was super excited to see someone other than the ‘main promoters’ establishing a route. I connected with the head honcho of the promotion and everyone involved seems to hold the same values as me from when I was promoting, so I was happy to volunteer my efforts with my shitty cameras, especially at my favourite venue in my entire Ontario route.
I rolled up solo with a duffle bag of 3 old ass DSLR cameras, 2 tripods, a laptop and an audio interface. I got the sound board routed to my laptop (in which I’m hoping the audio came out clean and didn’t get stuck in overrun and clipping hell) and I set up a Hardcam, as well as rocking my red handcam I’ve dubbed the Redddcam. This is a production setup I built up doing the Stay Tuned videos in the basement, shot a pro wrestling show with to test a few weeks ago, and now got to finally shoot a rap show with the fleet I dreamed of my entire history promoting shows. (Especially considering there was much more professional filmers and cameras in the room, so I can use my footy as backup shots to theirs.)
I met a stack of great people tonight. Starting with the headliners, I got to chop it up with them and joke about when I asked them to ft on a Dragon Ball Z sample beat when I was 14. (I also might have accidentally got my ass stuck in their fan photos the entire night as I was filming right by their merch booth.)
Other great interactions of the night were reconnecting with that OG over some life shit, meeting the co-promoter of the show (also a filmer) who shares the set of values of me & the other promotion, an indie wresting filmer, an MMA filmer, and some dope ass artists. Site note, with those dope ass artists, I needed to connect with them, so I got the co-promoter to hold my camera for 5 mins while I ran outside and caught them before they left to tell them they have their ear to the ground sonically and I neeeeed to chat with them soon.)
I learned a few things tonight too.
- Canon T3s overheat when there’s only 1 smoke break in the entire night.
- My dummy batteries are inconsistent and 3 real batteries are not enough for that long of a show.
- The dummy batteries work at home, this just seems to be the second event in which my hardcam post had a fucking busted ass wall outlet smh). Never forget an extension cord ever again.
- I am so nostalgic for St Cath. The drive there, the venue, and the drive home have me smiling like a bitch in the car, even when no thoughts are particularly hitting, i’m just smiling like an idiot here happy.
- I think I finally found out how to handle my “tour” urge without all the booking bullshit. I do need to recontextualize my role as a “filmer” with my shite cameras and lack of skill, but I still have a lot of value to provide, through serving as the bottom layer of recording production and shining in post-production, as well as hopefully curating content with the artists going forward (using footy as music video baselines, producing live performance videos, curating collabs and cards, etc)
- it helps that what i could potentially earn for providing this service would be what id make on average from running a show anyways too.
- I think I’m ready to do that DBZ sample song with them.
That’s it. Goodnight y’all
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