There’s a musical event in downtown Salt Lake City, called The Twilight Concert Series.  Back in 2007, one of my favorite bands was the headlining act:  Calexico.  It wasn’t easy getting clearance from the event promoters to record the show, and permission to get onstage.  They wouldn’t let me pull audio directly from the mixing board, so I got in touch with one of the best sound engineers I’ve ever met – Dave Marshall.  He showed up at the outdoor amphitheater with a badass parabolic microphone, with dual mics pointed at each other, and stationed himself in a prime spot before the crowd arrived.  It looked like a giant UFO had descended from the clouds and landed on the lawn in front of the stage.

I had no concern about audio, but as my brother and I found our positions, security said we couldn’t be anywhere near the stage.  That was not the agreement, and I was fucking pissed.  I knew the band would be fine with it, but I wasn’t allowed to discuss it with them. I had a clear idea of how I wanted the show to look, but if I didn’t accept the terms, we couldn’t shoot at all.  We tried to find steady places, but kept getting moved by the shifting crowd.  I knew with our lenses zoomed all the way in, the footage might be too shaky to be usable.  We did our best under the circumstances.  

The following day, Marshal handed me a fantastic live audio recording, though my bitterness about not getting the visuals I wanted led me to regrettably shelve the performance.  But as I watched image stabilization software improve over the years, I kept this concert in the back of my mind.  

So, once this restoration project began, I knew it was time to take another look at it.  Ironically, it wasn’t even close to how bad I had convinced myself, at the time.  The first 2 songs were the worst, as we literally tried to find our footing.  Rather than struggle with it – I just cut those two from the picture completely.  I opened it instead with a slow song, to set the mood, and used the sequence of driving down a desert road from my personal documentary, ‘Psychomanteum’, to start the show.  

Ultimately, after I enhanced the video quality, stabilized some of the camerawork, and re-edited a few moments, I cracked a beer, sat back and enjoyed the whole experience.   Hope you do as well!