VJ'ing

Cosmonaut

Dispite being the most horrible phrase you could possibly bring up in a conversation, VJ'ing is something ive gotten into very quickly, and just wondering if its gaining much momentum across the country.

Personally, my passion for Live Visuals, came from being at rock festivals and seeing the shots of the band, straight from the mixer, full of effects and amazing cuts. On further investigation i stumbled upon this entire world of VJ'ing which exists on the web, and throughout the globe.

After a bit of practise, i managed to get a gig (the 30th on this month) down here in Waterford during the annual street festival 'Spraoi'. So next week ill be performing visuals, for like the 2nd time on an outdoor stage in the center of town in front of +5,000 people (my first attempt is in a club tonight :eek:).

So basically this is just a post to get ideas from other VJ's / editors out there, and their experience with live visuals. The do's & dont's, and any experiences youve had in the field.

mycroft

Cosmonaut wrote:

Dispite being the most horrible phrase you could possibly bring up in a conversation, VJ'ing is something ive gotten into very quickly, and just wondering if its gaining much momentum across the country.

Personally, my passion for Live Visuals, came from being at rock festivals and seeing the shots of the band, straight from the mixer, full of effects and amazing cuts. On further investigation i stumbled upon this entire world of VJ'ing which exists on the web, and throughout the globe.

After a bit of practise, i managed to get a gig (the 30th on this month) down here in Waterford during the annual street festival 'Spraoi'. So next week ill be performing visuals, for like the 2nd time on an outdoor stage in the center of town in front of +5,000 people (my first attempt is in a club tonight :eek:).

So basically this is just a post to get ideas from other VJ's / editors out there, and their experience with live visuals. The do's & dont's, and any experiences youve had in the field.

Well that all depends, are you just using a vision mixer and a couple of VHS decks or a laptop, what visuals are you using (ie Arkos), just live stuff mixed or have you got other material that you're playing with?

miju

yeah a bit more information on what your planning would be handy alright

Cosmonaut

Cool sorry.

Yea im using Arkaos to mix pre-prepared visuals ive done myself, and also random video files from the web. But ive a camera set up which i can take live feeds from at any stage durin the performance, and rig it in with Arkaos so effects can be added.

Thats the gist of the setup anyway.

Ye guys ever dun it before?

miju

yeah that should work grand, ive run everything through Araos a good few times but if your planning on getting into it properly you'll want to be looking into buying some hardware.

namely a visual mixer (id say a budget of about €3,000 should get you a really decent one) and a projector and so on unless of course your planning to do only visuals in places that already have the gear but that can really reduce the amount of gigs that your able to do.

How many cameras you running? are they wireless, on a jib / tripod what are the camera/s?

What kind of ideas you looking for?

Cosmonaut

Yea i was lookin at hardware mixzers (with really no idea wot exactly i needed) but the time deadline i just had to go software based.

im running a run of the mill Digi8 camera on a tripod connected with firewire.

Yea good point about the projector. ATM im just usin the ones allready set up, but it would be important for me to get one myself.

How much would wireless nodes cost anyway? and u connect one to a crappy camera like that? (im lookin into gettin an XL1 in the next few months)

i doint really know wot im askin for. i jumped into this on my own, and just lookin for general tips people have, so im not goin down the wrong path. im just startin off at VJing, because i really want to get into visuals for actual bands. Allways so jelous of the guys who get to do that at festivals.

Thanks for the advise so far anyways.
good to know im not completely off the mark.
ill pop up sum images of the gig on sat, once the impending hangover ends.
cheers.

miju

dont suppose you live in Dublin by any chance? if you do your more than welcome to come to a gig on the 11th of Aug and I'll have a bit of a chat with you or we can just continue on posting here i dont mind really

miju

you can buy average wireless transmitters for about €70 a pair (transmitter & reciever) granted these are usually used for homes ending TV signals about the house but for distances less than 40m (and providing they are in a clear line of sight of each other) then they should do the job. They are very handy and means you dont have to be carting reels of cables about the place.

theres a good few different visual mixers you can buy depending on your budget and if you want effects,wipes how many channels / connection types you need and so on if you give me an idea of your budget i could make a few suggestions.

ive a Canon XL1 myself and my advice would be to not buy one for visuals, i use it for close up stage shots and producing videos and not much else the main camera i use is a Sony USB handycam (cost about €700) that has a 900x digital zoom and night vision (which can be handy because in alot of indoor venues the lights tend to cut of the projector and so the high contrast from the night vision helps solve that problem meaning your not battling lights for the whole gig)

also bear in mind that projectors (or at least the ones that you'll need to do visuals are expensive) and you probably looking at least €5-6,000 entry level projector, getting into this game is fupping expensive but then again theres some great money to be made from it as well.

my projector cos me €7,000 and I made it back within about 6 months from doing nothing else but hiring it out.

Cosmonaut

Cool. well my camera is bascially a handicam (does niteshot and has 900x zoom)

thats interesting about the projector actually. fantastic how u made the money back. who were u renting it to? and i actually live in Waterford, which mite make renting such equipment a bit harder.

Yea i woudlnt mind hoppin up to dublin for a gig. Im up there every 2 weeks anyway (family is from Balinteer).
send me sum info sure: dannyodwyer@gmail.com

Just wondering too, do you VJ or do visuals or what?
Ive been making short movies with my mates, but im primarily a web designer, hence my n00bish attitude to the scene. Think its fantastic though. Its something not a lot of people are envolved with at the moment, which makes any1 who knows wot their doin, a valuable commodity to any club/organiser.

Quess i just wanna make myself valuable...r sumthin

do u have a visual mixer?
know any websites/irish shops that sell em, before i start lookin around.

eyedrenalin

For the love of god, don't buy a video mixer unless you really reall have to! I've been doing visuals for a few years now and I've done some decent gigs, gotten some nice feedback etc. and I can tell you for an absolute fact that a copy of any decent visuals application and a MIDI controller will be money better spent. Unless you are using PAL sizes [720x576] or something really crazy like HD, your not going to get improvement [in proportion to the cash you have to spend]. I've been using a customised copy of Winamp's AVS with amazing MIDI responsive AVI players [by pixelcorp - www.eclectronics.org] and I've never had a reason to upgrade. That's not the best app to start with though. Try something like resolume. It's better than arkaos for too many reasons to begin to type. One thing I will say is, when I started doing visuals, I was convinced I could make a serious go of it and be a millionaire by the time I was 25 [I'm now 25 and defo not a millionaire!]. Don't make the mistake of trying to make a business out of it because a few [I say few, I mean 2] 'corporate' visual companies have the big gig market [oxygen and the like] completely sown up. The best way to build your skills is to get put together a DVD of samples [you can render your output on the fly uncompressed in Resolume] and send it out to some small record labels, venues around the country and be persistent to the point of annoying in calling and offering work. Be prepared to work for free for the first year or so, because [no offence intended] you are going to be producing generic crap for the first while [as does everybody] until you find your own groove. Good luck and if you need any help, PM me or whatever.

E

bucks

I used to mess around with this whilst in college.

I did a few gigs with the Light Surgeons and enjoyed every minute of it.

The way technology is gone now you could run an excellent show of a high powered laptop. I wouldnt buy a vision mixer unless you have a lot of work and really need it. Ive messed around with the panasonic mx-50 and although it was a great bit of kit it was pricey.

Best bit of advice i could give is rent as much equipment as possible before spending huge amounts of money buying it. This way you can work with different gear, find out which is right for you and if you decide to pack it in at least you wont have to worry about trying to sell all the kit you bought.

One thing ive noticed about vj'ing is that there is feck all respect for it in Ireland from club and venue owners. They see vj's as an added expense which they could do without and its reasons like that why it hasnt taken off here as big as it has in the UK, Oz, USA etc...

Check out www.cavs.ie for AV gear.

miju

I've made a fair few bob from doing visuals granted I dont get paid that much from bands/promoters but I dont mind because thats why I started doing em in the first place.

How I make money from visuals is I concentrate hiring out gear to the corporate market the likes of projectors / flip charts / cameras and so on I charged about half the price of the likes of AVC and so on and it funded most of equipment buying. When I say corporate I mean companies having meetings in the likes of hotels and so on for the day and all you do is walk in with a projector or whatever set it up walk out and come back and collect it later that day and collect/ invoice em for the cash.

Personally I went for a more hardware based setup rather than the soft option as when the corporate guys come along with bigger gigs than your average conference then you can up the ball game and impress em / charge more and get more regular business. im ranting again aint i :-)