Live Filming Options

We believe we’re the best value for editing for our footage, and we pride ourselves on our skill of editing watchable, motivated films. But, you might not need your footage edited, maybe there’s an editor already on your team, and we can accommodate that. Let us know if you’d like to be quoted with or without editing!

We try to send all our footage as close to finished as possible, first time, but we're always happy to make changes. If your piece is more complicated, or you have an exact idea of how you want your piece to be edited, more editing rounds will help us work together to get the film exactly right. 

We think our best work is what we deliver in our final footage, but we can also provide raw files.Nobody wants to see the truly raw files, they’re sometimes in excess of 100GB per camera. So, to make raw files easier for you to work with, the raw files we provide our clients are more like "lightly toasted" files. These toasted files are colour graded, aligned and sound-synced whenever possible, so that our footage is always seen in the quality it’s intended for, wherever it’s used.

After shooting your show, we’ll deliver your footage as a final finished film, usually on our Vimeo vimeo.com/blackfish. You can watch and download your footage from here, as well as sharing the link with whoever needs to see it, but the footage is private, and only viewable by those with the link. For more private pieces, we can password protect these links. We usually keep links up for 6 months. If you’d prefer a different delivery method, please let us know before shooting.

If you’d like your footage or files on physical media, we can provide this in the form of a flash drive or DVD, for an extra charge, plus shipping.

Clients with shows that are highly changeable - involving things like crowd-work, improv, comedy or clown - often opt for shooting multiple performances across multiple nights of the run. The price to shoot per night is highest for shooting one night, as we bill for shooting and editing separately. With shooting on multiple nights, you can shoot as many times as you like and only pay for the edits on the nights you like. We can edit one of them, some of them, all of them or even a mix of different nights.

Our strength as videographers is our background in theatre, and we pride ourselves on our skill of capturing a whole show whilst seeing it for the first time.

For productions that need their film to have that high-production edge, we also offer previewed production. This is where we preview show one before the shoot date, either in performance or rehearsal, to produce for ourselves a shooting script, that allows us to anticipate the action when shooting, and produce a tightly polished film as a result. Most shows don’t require this, due to our aforementioned skill, but consider it if your show is more complex, fast-paced or overall surprising.

See also: Multi-show shoots

These times can vary for more complicated shoots (shows with long runtimes, productions with multiple cameras, or multiple shoots), so we’ll specify with you when you can expect your film.

We’re open to hearing any turnaround time, no matter how last minute, though we can’t promise it will be possible.

4K is higher quality than High Definition footage in that it has a higher resolution, or total number of pixels making up each frame. High definition is 1920x1080 pixels, or 2.1 Megapixels in photography terms. 4K is 3840x2160, or 8.3 Megapixels, four times the quality of 4K. 4K footage is recommended for making promotional material, and essential for making Vertical Video (find out why).

If you’re shooting your show to show the show to new audiences, or if you’re expecting to showcase the footage on a television, projection or screening, then 4K is the best choice for quality on these large format screens.

When we shoot Single-Camera, the footage of your show will be captured in one static, wide Master angle, which covers the whole stage, so no action is missed. Single-camera works excellently for simple shows, especially those on small stages with limited action, or for filming which will only serve as in-house review and archive.

When we shoot Multi-Camera, we shoot the same static wide Master angle as we do in Single-Camera, and add tracking, Close-up angles. Then, in the edit, we cut between the Master angle and the tracking angles, choosing which angle is best. Because the Master angle covers the whole stage, the Close-up angles can change and move, allowing them to be more dynamic, and shoot footage more engaging to a viewer. Multi-Camera is best for shows with lots of action, big casts, large stages and any show where the audience isn't head-on to the stage. It's also recommended for any productions which wish to share the footage with new audiences, either via promotional material, or as a full film.