behind the concert video with jeremy silveira (Hop Along at The Fest)

I cannot overstate how important YouTube is to my personal music enjoyment. It's where I go to search stuff like "[new band or song I like] live]" "[old music video I need to see for 1,000th time]" "[favorite band] on [late night television show]"...it's a treasure trove of music video experiences. Have you heard of YouTube? You should check it out.

Today's blog post is a special interview, in a "behind the music video" kind of way. First, you need to know that there's a video on YouTube of the incredible band Hop Along playing the song "Tibetan Pop Stars" at the Gainesville, Florida music festival known as The Fest in 2012. I've embedded it here so you can watch:

It is simply amazing concert videography: one camera, one shot, getting up close and personal with Frances Quinlan singing one of the most devastating rock songs of all time. But the magic really kicks in when the camera swoops up onstage and films the band from the back so you can see a packed, heaving crowd screaming along to every word. You're a stranger in India, I'm gonna be CREEPING ON YOU SO HARD. A perfect moment preserved for all time, and you can watch it on your phone whenever you want.

I had the idea to email Jeremy Silveira, the director / cinematographer who shot and posted the video, to ask about the experience of shooting it—this is what having a blog is all about guys, you can just email people and ask them questions, it's neat—and he kindly answered my questions. The interview, below...

[Molly Mary O'Brien] What was your background in film before working with The Fest?

[Jeremy Silveira] I went to the University of Florida for TV Production stuff, so filming stuff was just a large part of what I was doing with my life at the time. Through school and also work I had access to a lot of nice gear that I could never afford on my own but was always able to borrow so I was always using it to film stuff around town.

How did you get involved with The Fest?

I went to Fest 4 almost by accident, I had just moved to town and saw Against Me! was playing some show so I went to that, but then stumbled into seeing Dillinger Four/Radon and it kind of blew open my whole world a bit of this music scene that was somehow just out of my periphery.  So I started going to a lot of local shows around Gainesville and making random friends.

Back then (this is 2006ish) people with nice cameras, which I only had because of school, were few and far between and especially people who were filming small shows around town like I was. I had become friends with the band Spanish Gamble and they connected me with this guy Mackenzie who was running a group called National Underground that was filming everything at Fest, so from Fest 6-10 I was working with them filming and editing sets to put out. Somewhere in the world (maybe Michigan or Orlando right now?) is a box filled with a crazy amount of HDV tapes or hard drives with footage and audio recordings from a lot of those sets. NU naturally kind of disbanded after Fest 10 and I just took over running the video crew at Fest until Fest 15 which is when I got a job in Los Angeles which involved me moving and took up too much time in my life to be able to properly run the video team.

What was shooting at The Fest like, in general? (How many camera operators were covering it? Did you shoot full sets or bounce around? etc.)

In my experience it was the best, some of my favorite memories in life are from filming at The Fest. It's evolved a bit over the years in how it has been covered, some shows you had 3-4 cameras running on the entire thing shooting full sets, sometimes you're just running in to catch a song or two from a band. When I first started I was just happy filming anything and to be there, but also since I was the new guy in the group I was "stuck" with the boring wide cam shot in back of the venue, which in hindsight was perfect because all I had to do was making sure it was recording and then I got to enjoy some sets that are now pivotal memories in my life such as Small Brown Bike or Avail from Fest 6.

Once I was running the video team (and honestly as the way people consumed live footage changed) we went away from focusing so much on full sets with multi cameras and were doing more stuff with specific songs or just one camera at each set.  The Lineup was always too stacked and I wanted to see everyone so I was usually silly and scheduled myself a day of bouncing between way too many bands with no breaks trying to catch what I could.  I can't really speak to how things are done there now, all I know is I look forward every year to seeing what I normally have to miss.

Were you familiar with Hop Along before shooting that set? Did the crowd reaction surprise you or were you familiar with the cathartic power of "Tibetan Pop Stars" in advance?

I was very familiar with Hop Along before that set, I still think Get Disowned is a perfect record.  Thankfully everyone else in that crowd seemed to agree with me so I just assumed everyone else was as excited as I was to hear "Tibetan Pop Stars" live.  For me that set is also an example of how much it helps to know the songs while filming, I wasn't totally planning on filming full songs, I was trying to get just clips I could use for a highlight video which is why I moved around so much knowing certain moments were coming.  When I went back and watched the whole thing I realized it all worked though which was fun.

Do you remember what camera you were shooting on for that set?

ehhhhhhh.....its been so long I honestly don't remember, it might have been a Panasonic HVX200 that i was borrowing from work, or it might have been a Panasonic Lumix GH3 that I owned for a little bit. I was lucky to be working for a company at the time which gave me access to some nice gear I couldn't afford on my own so might have just depended on what was not in use that weekend.

Any tech difficulties, limitations, or general Fest-related quirks you had to deal with?

At this point I had been filming at Fest for years so I had figured out all the weird tricks for getting what i need with each venue.  Fest has a very family community aspect to it so for most of the venues I normally knew the stage managers, security people, sound techs, etc... so they would help me out to get into certain positions since they knew I would stay out of their way or if they needed me to move I would without question since we we're all just working together for a positive Fest experience.

You have a bunch of videos up on your channel that are 7+ years old — with a lot of the older internet getting deleted and falling into disrepair, do you think it's important to preserve this kind of footage? Does anyone comment or message you with reactions or stories from those shows?

I love that there is a place for all of this to live thats easier for people to access then having to pass around DVDs or tapes.  I used to film and upload as many bands that came through town as possible just because I wanted to give smaller bands as much publicity as possible.  I still randomly get comments on the older videos which is usually a mix of people who were there happy to re-live moments or even just new fans.  My favorite one recently was when a band member commented that the show I filmed was the first time with that group and actually met some other people that night who changed his life for the better so it was fun for him to look back on that. Glad I could be a part of that in a small way.

Thank you Jeremy! Go look at his channel, it rocks.

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