20 Jan Antimatter – Live Between the Earth & Clouds

2017 at Tomfoolery has so far been dominated by the live edit of Antimatter’s live show filmed last year. Captured by 18 cameras, it’s been a tough show to bring together but with the master export currently on it’s way out of Premiere we’re finally there.

We were asked to get a kind of old school live TV feel to the film so used a lot of long blends and crossfaded shots, but occasionally slips in to hard, quick cuts as tracks get more active. We took inspiration from loads of live shows, especially proggy bands to get the right kind of dreamy feel. This King Crimson one was particularly helpful.

The process itself was relatively simple, but long. We started with a multicam edit as if cutting it for a live broadcast. We sent each track to Mick for feedback and then recut it and began adding in the more “mood specific” effects. We did another round of feedback and then brought Mick in to the edit to do a last pass.

Before we finished it off we had a few problems to overcome; two new sets of lights caused strobing and the variety of frame rates and resolutions meant some technical wrangling. Mick, the lead from the band, wanted a handful of tracks removing from the set, one for a broken string and another couple of flow. The former was solved with some handy effects work and some later very lucky timing from the band letting us cut with match of actions.

To add a little extra stress we were working to a deadline for Prog Magazine who wanted to review the film. Then they went bust, which was sad but took a little pressure off. Then they got bought, which was great but they needed the edit in a panic inducing three days.

We managed to get it finished, exported and uploaded just in time for them to review, and while we won’t be hosting the project online if Antimatter are your particular cup of tea you will soon be able to buy a copy of the show here: http://www.antimatteronline.com/