In spring 2017, we had the incredible opportunity to not only collaborate with Girl Blue on a music video, but also capture a live performance of one of the more intimate songs off her 2016 EP I Am Not A Star.

It goes without saying how exceptionally talented she is, but to have a screen presence like what we captured at Joe’s Garage, LIVE, expresses an even more tremendous level of talent. With the fantastic Dan DeKalb mixing and recording on behalf of Just Pretend Records, we were able to nail the video and recording in just three takes, and the mix speaks for itself.

Recording something live presents several challenges. You need enough cameras running on the performer to always have full coverage to cut to in editing, while still having motivated camera movements that add to the subject matter at critical points. We were able to do this with three cameras, with the third floating around on our DJI Ronin gimbal. In addition, our lighting set up was intentionally left in frame at the suggestion of Arielle to accentuate the stripped-back feeling of the piece. What we got was something simple – intentionally simple – that gave Arielle the room to breathe and do all the hard work for us.