Shooting without a storyline adds difficulty

So I was sent up to Lyons with the task of shooting a video about RockyGrass. An annual bluegrass festival and workshop held on the grounds of a small complex along the banks of St. Vrain Creek.

While it was fairly easy shooting video of all the folks making, learning and playing the various instruments of bluegrass, I was completely unsure of what my storyline was. It was a transition period from the Planet Bluegrass Academy to the RockyGrass Music Festival. So that could have been one storyline, but it wasn't very interesting really. We had already sent a still photog the day before and there was another photog shooting again before I had arrived. That kind of drove me away from focusing too much on the academy participants. Then there's the campground of people attending one or both of the different aspects of the event. The only catch was that there were few people around sardine-like tents and vehicles to train my lens on.

There I went, roaming around shooting this and that with no concept in mind. The other issue with shooting music with a single camera is trying to figure out a way to shoot multiple angles of a situation but keeping the music and movements in sync. Lots and lots of details are needed to "Band-aid" all those camera movements while the tape is still rolling. After shooting nearly an hour of footage and talking with a few people, I happened upon Bryan Conley. He was practicing a couple songs in the middle of a small grove of trees away from most other players and obtrusive sounds. Looking at my remaining tape time and knowing I didn't have a storyline yet, I decided he was going to have to become the audio backbone for the production. Not as good of a piece as I would like it to be, but considering it's after midnight and I've been stressing out my MacBook Pro's processor for a few hours, it'll work and I'll learn from it.