Roll It! Take it! Media, LLC: Press Hype!

Behind the cameras with the Packers at Lambeau Field
Madison video producer and musician Kenneth LaBarre works with Fox Sports at NFC Championships Kristian Knutsen on Sunday 01/20/2008 12:02 pm

LaBarre stands by a camera and in minus-30 degree wind chill at Lambeau Field on Saturday.
Credit:Kenneth LaBarre

For Packers fans lucky enough to score a ticket to the NFC Championship game at Lambeau Field this evening, it's going to be a cold one out there. The warmth of more than 70,000 other people watching the game can only warm one up so much amidst wind chills approaching minus-30 degrees. Try turning one four-hour game into a 15-hour day, though. That's how long Kenneth LaBarre will spend at the stadium in Green Bay on Sunday, though, working the cameras for the broadcast of the game.

Along with being a singer and guitarist with the Madison-based rock group Tangy, La Barre runs Roll It! Take It! Media, LLC, an independent live video production company through which he has shot numerous major concerts, festivals, and major sports games. He is in Green Bay this weekend shooting the Packers first NFC Championship game in over a decade, running cameras for Fox Sports at Lambeau Field.

La Barre has already spent plenty of time out in the cold, helping set up the cameras and on-camera set for the broadcast on Saturday amidst minus-30 wind chills. After sharing a few photos of the ice-encrusted stadium, La Barre answered a few questions from The Daily Page about his work for the big game this weekend.

The Daily Page: What will you be doing for the broadcast of the NFC Championship game? LaBarre: I'll be running camera for the pre-game show, and then relieving other field camera ops during the game.

How did you get this job? I'm a full time broadcast freelancer. Usually I'm hired as a director or technical director but in this case since I had worked for Fox as a camera operator before and they needed some extra help for this game, they gave me a call and asked if I was available.
What were you doing in Green Bay on Saturday? We were in the process of checking all the cameras to make sure they were in their proper positions and working correctly. Normally we would have a full rehearsal with talent, lights, etc.... but due to the cold it was canceled and instead we concentrated on making sure all the technical equipment was working correctly before we covered it up for the night.

How was the weather on Saturday? Bitterly cold. The wind was relentless as well which added to the fun. In the pic I am wearing about $700 worth of the North Face gear, as well as a pair of Sorrel boots that are rated to -100 degrees.

I needed all that just to do the basics. We tried to limit our exposure to 30 minutes at a time, but at the point I took those pictures we had been out there for 90 minutes and had reached our limit. Luckily it was close to the end of the day and we only had to go out one more time for about 45 minutes.

How will you keep warm on Sunday? Layers, layers, layers. Limited exposure to the weather and all of my gear. Thirty minutes before the pre-game show starts we will be on the field, and will stay there until the game starts, which will probably be about an hour outdoors. At that point we'll go inside and warm up, and then probably start rotating through the outdoor camera positions to relieve the operators so they can go in and get warm.

What will be your responsibilities during the game? Depends. If we do indeed relieve the other operators I'll probably be running a low endzone camera since that's my specialty. Who knows though? I could wind up in any position, or instead tearing down the equipment from the pre-game show. Originally we weren't doing a half-time and post-game show but that may change. If we do have to do one I will have to operate a camera for that, then once we are off the air we will start tearing everything down.

You mention that the strike is the hardest part of the job. How long does that take, and when do you think you might be completed following the game? Normally the tear down, or "strike" takes 3 to 4 hours for a show this large, and that's in "normal" weather conditions. The last time I did a show this size at Lambeau in winter (NFL Network, Dec 2006) we got on-site at 10 a.m. and didn't get out until 3 a.m.

This show, pre-game included, is a 30 camera show and there are 4 HD broadcast trucks here plus two support trucks. All of those carry the equipment we are using, plus they've shipped in a number of things on top of that so it takes along time to get it all off the field, wrapped up, loaded on to the trucks, etc...

Why is this the hardest part of the day? Because you've already been working for 12 hours, in bitter cold, and now you have to find the energy to take it all down and put it all away.

Luckily we have some of the best people in broadcast sport production working on this show and they know exactly what to do and they do it very quickly and efficiently.

What are you looking forward to most for the game? Hmmm... not sure I'm looking forward to anything in particular. My goal is to stay warm and do a great job in whatever capacity I'm needed.

What am I really looking forward to? Getting back to my hotel room after we're done, having a soak in a hot bath, and reading the latest issue of Tape Op.

The NFC Championship game between the Packers and the Giants officially kicks off at 5:42 p.m., and will broadcast on Fox 47 in Madison. Game time temperature is forecast to start off just above zero, and should drop steadily through the evening with wind chills 15 to 25 below zero.

LaBarre has tape, will travel By Rob Thomas

Let's say you attend one of the big "destination" music festivals, like Lollapalooza in Chicago or the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Texas. And let's say you spend a little too much time at the hot dog stand or in line for T-shirts, and by the time your favorite band goes on stage, you're relegated to the distant back rows.

Ken LaBarre just became your new best friend.

LaBarre, who lives in Madison, is in demand these days as a live video director for big festivals like Lollapalooza and the Austin City Limits Music Festival, which he worked last week, filming veteran artists like Tom Petty and Van Morrison as well as younger acts like the Raconteurs and Flaming Lips. It's LaBarre's job to direct the live concert footage that gets projected onto the giant video screens that flank the stage, giving even those in the worst seats a chance to see the show.

It's a unique kind of directing, mixing the artistic and technical demands of shooting a documentary with the on-the-fly decision-making of shooting a live sporting event. From his console, LaBarre directs a number of cameramen around the stage, signaling what shots he wants and then switching back and forth between one shot to the next.
LaBarre has tape, will travel
Jay Janner/AP
Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips gets into a giant plastic bubble to perform at the Austin City Limits Music Festival last week.

"I compare it to log rolling," LaBarre says. "You take one misplaced step and you're off the log."

As gas prices and other expenses make touring the country more prohibitive for musicians, big "event" festivals that gather together dozens of top acts are becoming more and more popular for bands as an easy, concentrated way of reaching tens of thousands of fans. For fans who balk at soaring ticket prices, it's also an easy and economical way of seeing a summer's worth of music in just three days. Lollapalooza, for example, used to tour from venue to venue around the country, but has reinvented itself as a three-day event in Chicago's Grant Park that drew some 170,000 people last month.

Such large crowds make the big video screens more crucial than ever. And LaBarre finds himself filming for fans who aren't there as well as those who are.

Much of LaBarre's footage was simultaneously broadcast on the Internet during the festival, and a few Austin and Lollapalooza performances are still archived at www.att.com/blueroom. And a two-disc "Austin City Limits Festival 2005" DVD was released earlier this summer featuring some of LaBarre's work with bands like the Frames and Kasabian.

Whether the viewer is at the concert or at home, watching it live or on DVD, LaBarre says he wants the video experience to capture the mood and the magic of the live show as much as possible.

"I want to make it look like it's live and it's really happening," he says. "There's a lot of stuff out there that looks really overedited. I don't want that. You want to be in the moment and have the spontaneity."

LaBarre says he may be uniquely suited to the job, having been both a video director and a musician for most of his life. His local pop-rock group Tangy plans to release a new album next year, and as a director, he's filmed everything from a Richard Thompson show at the Barrymore Theatre to the first annual Madison Area Music Awards.

"I always wanted to work with people who I like, and that I knew their music," he says. "I really honestly believe that if I don't know the artist and I don't like the artist, I won't do a good job. Some people will take any job they can. For me, it was always do I get them?"

Working a big festival like Austin's means working with a lot of different musicians, whose reaction to being filmed can be very different.

Some veteran artists like to keep the cameras to an absolute minimum, which means that the video footage tends to look pretty staid.

Other musicians will let the camera operators shoot whatever they want. The Flaming Lips, whose wild stage show features dancing aliens, hand puppets, fake blood and lead singer Wayne Coyne encased in a giant bubble, let LaBarre shoot anything. The result, with cameras allowed to roam freely around the stage, looks like a documentary.

And then some artists will take an active role in shaping their video footage. The Raconteurs, featuring Jack White of the White Stripes, asked LaBarre to film them in bleached-out sepia, as if it was an old movie. LaBarre took the idea and ran with it.

"I love it when an artist gives input, because it means that they care about what they're showing," he says. "They embrace the medium. They want the look to fit their image."

And then there are those unplanned things that can happen at any live concert. It might be a surprise decision by the performer, such as Matisyahu suddenly leaping into the audience and dancing, forcing LaBarre to call "audibles" to get his camera operators in place to film him.

Or it might be an "act of God," such as the driving rainstorm that suddenly hit during Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' set, which made for striking footage of the band getting pelted with wind and rain as they struggle to finish "Handle with Care."

On the other hand, LaBarre sometimes has to deal with unplanned moments that are best left unfilmed. The most notorious moment of this year's Austin City Limits festival occurred when singer-songwriter Ben Kweller suffered a massive nosebleed while onstage. (The video, for those who can stomach it, has been uploaded at YouTube.com.)

"You also have to be open to mistakes, something that occurs that's unexpected or unplanned," LaBarre says. "A lot of times those are the moments that make it special."

E-mail: rthomas@madison.com
Published: September 27, 2006

Video Producer Here Is On A Roll

Friday, July 14, 2006
Doug Moe
IT HAS been quite a year for Madison video producer/director Ken LaBarre. He gained a daughter, nearly lost a leg, and spent an intense week in Texas in September capturing on video bands like Coldplay and the Black Crowes at the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

The DVD of that festival is now available (titled "Austin City Limits Music Festival 2005"), with director's credit for LaBarre, and the 39-year-old Chicago native and former Wisconsin Public Television producer is catching his breath and looking to the future. His short-term plans include directing video at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago's Grant Park early next month, and in September a return to Texas for an encore at the Austin festival.

The future depends in part on his physical well-being, since, after his triumph in Austin, LaBarre developed complications following knee surgery (he was an avid soccer player and fan) and credits the medical team at St. Mary's with literally saving his leg, though he still has mobility problems. Around the same time, Ken's wife, Melanie, gave birth to their second daughter. Maybe it's no wonder LaBarre speaks in rapid-fire sentences -- he has a lot to talk about.

He has, to be certain, hung in with the music industry when others might have said good riddance. LaBarre had a very hard time six or seven years ago when he struck a deal with songwriter-guitarist Richard Thompson to videotape Thompson's Barrymore show. The deal roughly called for LaBarre to put the concert on video at his expense, and then, if Thompson liked what he saw, LaBarre could market it as a video and share the proceeds with the artist.

Thompson liked a rough cut, but somewhere between there and the video store shelves some lawyers got involved, and the end result was LaBarre was never able to market the video, though an edited version was shown on Wisconsin Public Television to general acclaim.

"The world's greatest demo tape" is how LaBarre now refers to it, and though he says it with some irony he might be right, since the Thompson video led Butch Vig to allow LaBarre to shoot a Garbage show in Milwaukee.

For the past few years LaBarre has also been directing the videotaping of Badger football, basketball and hockey games -- if you're seen the replays that flash on the giant scoreboards at Camp Randall or the Kohl Center, you've seen his work.

He seems equally passionate about music and sports. He had his music hat on early last year when he heard about the Lollapalooza festival that was going to play Grant Park in summer 2005. Having grown up in Chicago, LaBarre desperately wanted to work on that show. He kept pestering the production manager, who finally cited union issues in not hiring LaBarre. But they had loved his Richard Thompson/Garbage "demo" tape, and since the same people were putting on the Austin festival, they offered LaBarre a director's job in Texas. They didn't have to ask twice.

The in-house reviewer at Amazon.com liked the Austin DVD enough to call for a sequel, and since LaBarre is heading back in September, who knows? Of the first Austin gig he said Thursday, "It was the thrill of my life." ...

Ken LaBarre featured in "Badger Nation"!

"Technical director Ken LaBarre controls the image that appears on the screen and instructs the cameramen to stay focused on a particular shot. During the pregame festivities, when crowd shots are needed and for other special events like the Kiss Cam, LaBarre scans the live video footage for appealing shots of the crowd, the stadium, the team or of the marching band. Ackermann tells LaBarre what he is looking for and LaBarre finds that image on a
video feed. He sits in front of two televisions, one with preview images and the other with images that appear on the videoboard. LaBarre selects a preview image and posts it on the videoboard."

From DV MAGAZINE,

Multicamera Microproduction
by Bruce A. Johnson

Ken LaBarre is a friend of mine who, in 1997, after 10 years in the music and television business, decided to strike out on his own to produce and direct concert videos. To get his business off the ground, he decided to shoot a show on spec for a respected artist with a dedicated fan base. For his first production, he chose to go with what he knew, which was the big-iron, remote-truck-and-five-cameras approach. LaBarre asked me to run camera for the production. I've been a musician all of my life, and I was excited to work on the project. Along with the video remote truck, a separate multitrack truck recorded the audio. LaBarre cut the show live to reduce the postproduction time, and the show ended up being partially re-edited later in a linear CMX suite into two versions: a one-hour PBS special and a 120-minute home video.The artist flew in his own sound engineer to remix the multitrack audio in a marathon 19-hour mix session. The two-track audio master was laid back in sync with the CMX edit master. LaBarre spent a lot of time and money learning the process of producing a concert video. Sadly, in the end, he couldn't come to an agreement for the show's duplication and distribution. However, he did end up with the world's coolest live-music demo reel.One lesson I learned from working on his show was that you can't skimp on lighting for concert videos. The normal light plot for a rock show goes from a couple foot-candles to blinding brightness within seconds. It's the job of the video lighting consultant to keep the contrast ratio within some semblance of what video can actually handle. LaBarre hired professional lighting director, Ken Ferencek, for the show. Although Ferencek did a great job on the stage, he was hamstrung by the band's insistence that there be no light on the crowd. Any wide shots of the stage ended up being a blob of color in a sea of black.I did this job just before digital video hit it big. I purchased a Canon XL1 in 1998, and LaBarre got one a few months later. I quickly realized the power of the DV format, especially when coupled with low-hassle non-linear editing. The precision and malleability of nonlinear editing was what would make my budget-multicam trick work.


Multicamera microproduction
Our first attempt at what I like to call multicamera microproduction came in November 2000. A hot, young blues band out of South Dakota named Indigenous was coming to Luther's Blues, a new club in Madison, WI. LaBarre got a call from the band's record label to shoot the show for an upcoming DVD. He asked me to assist in planning the shoot on the tight budget the label had given him.Because the show was being taped for radio broadcast, we again had an audio truck multitracking the show. LaBarre decided to use a rented Ikegami HLV-55 Betacam to record the wide shot with timecode slaved to the audio record deck to aid sync in edit. The rest of the camera package consisted of the two Canon XL1s and two Canon Eluras that we owned. Eluras are great cameras and compact enough to tuck into a drum set or to capture any other odd angle. With wide-angle adapters, the Eluras and similar palmcorders can collect all kinds of wacky shots that are de rigueur in big music productions.Our coverage plan for the Indigenous show wasn't all that different from a big-iron-type show. You always have to cover the same essential elements when shooting a concert. We stationed the Betacam to the side of the house mixer, directly in front of center stage, about halfway back in the room where standing room ended and seating began. The two XL1 cameras were handheld stage left and right, and we could easily jump down to the floor from the 4-foot-high stage.We mounted one of the Eluras on the end of a cymbal stand so it looked up at the drummer. We placed the other high on an extended mic boom, pointing over the drummer and back at the crowd. We knew the band's first set probably wouldn't last more than an hour, so we loaded each of the DV cameras with a fresh battery and a 63-minute DV tape. We rolled the Eluras and ran offstage just as the band came on.The results were shockingly good. Between the Ikegami and the XL1s, we easily had enough good coverage to cut a video. And although the Elura footage was a bit washed out, it had that rock-and-roll look. One important detail during the recording was that there was no director on headsets telling the camera operators what to shoot. Just as on any production, it's essential to have strong, experienced camera operators. Each of us-LaBarre, myself, and fellow shooter Butch Soetenga-had an individual zone to cover, and we didn't stray much from them. Once again, we had lighting director Ken Ferencek provide additional lighting in Luther's Blues. With no limitation on lighting the crowd, he did a great job. A combination of color-gelled PAR can lights and neon signs that already existed in the club made for a luminous, high-energy look.
Johnson used Adobe Premiere to edit the five tracks from the Indigenous shoot, assigning each camera tape to its own track. He found syncing the tracks so easy that he didn't refer to the timecode burn-in on the Betacam track.
Neither LaBarre nor I would edit the final product, and it would not be released for many months to come, so I offered to make a rough cut to send to the band's label and management as a proof of performance. I took the footage, stacked up the five tracks in Adobe Premiere, synced up the shots, and shaved out all of the unusable pieces. What remained was more than enough to make an excellent-looking performance video.I was surprised that I never needed the timecode track on the Betacam-synchronizing in Premiere was so easy that I never missed the timecode. Although my edit never saw the light of a music video channel, some footage from the Luther's Blues show ended up in an Indigenous video that played on MTV several months later and was released on the Indigenous Live Rocks DVD (www.indigenousrocks.com).During some downtime between other productions, LaBarre and I refined our technique by practicing on LaBarre's own band, Tangy. They were playing in the finals of a Madison Battle of the Bands contest at Luther's Blues. Because we knew the room and the staff, we used the opportunity to experiment. It was time to try the secret weapon of the Canon XL1 and Elura: Frame Movie Mode.Because the job was an experiment, we took an audio feed from the house mixing board, which I augmented with a wireless mic placed all of the way at the back of the room and recorded to my XL1. I would later mix the two tracks together in Premiere.The zero budget also precluded using any extra lighting, which shows in our tapes. The stage was dark, and although the band is visible, the video just didn't have the punch of the Indigenous show. However, it looked good and could serve any band well as a promotional tool. An approach like this is perfect for documenting a performance not meant for mass distribution. It might even work well as streaming content on a Web site. Canon's Frame Movie Mode really made the footage stand out. It's not quite film, but it isn't quite video either.Around the time of the Tangy taping, DV-format production was gaining a foothold in the music industry. Not only were DV productions showing up on MTV, but Pearl Jam also led the charge to the mass market by releasing a DVD called Touring Band 2000 that featured over three hours of live concert video shot on DV equipment. This DVD convinced us we were on the right track. Having proved we could do small productions, we now wanted to take it to the next level.
Shooting Garbage
LaBarre knew Madison's hometown heroes and international rock stars Garbage (www.garbage.com) were bringing the 2002 tour to Milwaukee. He put together a video production proposal on the chance the band would be interested in documenting the show because Grabage had never released a live video in its 10-year existence. If nothing else, Garbage could file away the footage to use in the future, as many bands do. And unlike footage from countless TV appearances, the material would actually be owned and controlled by the band.Because we had successfully produced DV productions in the past, LaBarre pitched the band and its management on the low-input, high-impact model of shooting the show on DV. However, once he got the go-ahead, he immediately got cold feet. Like any director with too many options, he thought, "Big client means big iron." I reminded him we had already proven that wild-sync DV production was possible, and that he should trust his initial instinct to do something unconventional and cutting edge. He was still wavering the day we went to scout the Eagles Club Ballroom in Milwaukee. As we walked around the room with the building manager, I sensed the manager was extremely nervous about letting us work in his place. The Eagles Club Ballroom had recently hosted an Extreme Fighting event that brought a 50-foot production truck and cameras trailing cables all over the place. The manager's face lit up when I explained all we needed from him was a couple of AC outlets. From that point on, he was our best friend. This was an important bridge to cross because if the venue's management wasn't happy with us, they could have made our production difficult to accomplish.For the Garbage show, we wanted more coverage than we had previously used, so we lined up six XL1s and two Eluras for the job. The band's engineer got us a special audio mix with crowd noise from the board. We fed it to a Sony DSR-20 DVCAM VTR that recorded the Frame Movie Mode-video from one of the XL1s via S-Video.All of the other cameras were run wild without any timecode reference. Two XL1s were set on tripods in the balcony, one head-on and the other about 60 degrees toward stage right. LaBarre ran one of two more XL1s in the pit in front of the stage, and I ran a handheld XL1 on stage left. All eight cameras were set to Frame Movie Mode.
One big disadvantage we faced was that we had little idea of what to expect from the band, other than a quick look at the set list. Garbage fan LaBarre knew the band's music inside and out, so he briefed us on what to expect musically while I covered the camera assignments. Again, having trustworthy camera operators is imperative, and if you can find operators who have musical experience as well, you will be much better off. It pays big dividends when a camera operator can identify who is doing that guitar solo without being told.The footage looked great. The two Eluras planted in drummer Butch Vig's drum kit delivered really different, usable angles, and the balcony camera kept singer Shirley Manson in sight at all times, despite the vibration caused by the crowd and the band's sound system. One small problem surfaced about an hour into the show when we had to change tapes in three cameras simultaneously. After about 30 seconds of limited coverage, we were back to full force.Editing the Garbage footage was a pure joy because we never lacked for something to cut to. We again suffered from the un-lit crowd syndrome, but we knew that would be a problem going in. Garbage's music, despite being pop rock, has a darker quality about it, and the footage leant itself to the look we got.We produced a four-song demo DVD so the band could get an idea of what the footage looked like. An isolated drum-cam track demonstrates a possible extra feature that could be included on a DVD release.Word has it that the band was happy with the results. Although the final distribution of the video is still up in the air, I think we proved our point: DV makes it possible to produce high-impact, high-quality, live music performance videos that are on par with anything the big-iron approach can give you, but with a lot less hassle and cost.

Tangy rocks Sweden! Heading:
Swedish masters in English

Under the picture:
Rockers: Jason Rowe and Ken LaBarre is musicians themselves at home in USA and have the trio Tangy together. They are now planning on doing a cover of Soundtracks Galaxy Grammophone on their next record.

The story:
Ken LaBarre talks about Ebbots fantastic lyrics. Intelligent would be a understatement, he says.
Ken sees this trip to Sweden as a vacation and buisness. He has left his family at home and travelled with his bandmate Jason Rowe to see Soundtrack at Slussens and after that they will take a trip to England.
Ken is also trying to sell his band Tangy which he thinks fits better in in Europe than USA.
"The rock music at home is a sad affair. You never hear a good tune on the radio."
On their latest demo, Tangy do a cover of Soundtracks "Galaxy Grammophone", which is just one of many Soundtrack songs Ken loves. Most of all it is the lyrics that he has been hooked on.
"You almost never hear a 42 year old write so elegant and meaningful lyrics as Ebbot does. Maybe it sounds strange that an American have to discover a Swede to find really good lyrics in English, but that is how it is."
"You have Black Star for example, which is my absolute favourite. You really have to LISTEN to understand what it's all about. There are so many levels to it. It is among other things about raising a child and since I've became a father, that song has meant a lot to me."

Daniel Claeson (translation by Trond Gaasland)