Kevin Rhoades

Kevin Rhoades & Digital Arts
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When Kevin Rhoades, senior director and producer for Tourdesign, Blue Man Group's creative agency, was asked to make a video of the Toronto show for the group's use, the goal seemed straightforward: create a visually dynamic video that captures the show's energy and humor.
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"It's a very dark show with a lot of blacks and very bright colors," says Rhoades."HD gave us the latitude we needed to capture the strong contrasts."

Rhoades's strategy involved using four Panasonic VariCam HD cameras to shoot Blue Man Group's three opening performances.He would then finish in HD using Final Cut Pro 5, which allows editors to simultaneously view and cut from multiple sources in real time.

But there was a small problem: Tourdesign didn't have HD post-production capabilities.And the client wanted post-production to be handled in New York.

Multicam HD Editing in Final Cut Pro 5

"My original thought was to rent a Final Cut HD system and a room in New York and ghetto it together," says Rhoades.Then he learned about Ericson and Digital Arts and its new, built-from-the-ground-up HD production facility.

"It was a much better situation to go into a company that had already been set up to do HD," Rhoades says."It had everything in place, plus Axel's HD experience.I'd used Final Cut, so the learning curve was not very deep."

Blown Away

"Kevin had to come up with 90 minutes of material that was 12-camera multishot," Axel Ericson says.
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Kevin had to synchronize 12 cameras with very tight deadlines.He was amazed how smoothly things went.He could lock the cameras with the time-of-day code, and they all would lock perfectly."

Rhoades says, "With 12 cameras, you have the coverage you need , your close-ups, your long shots, your crane shots.
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Kevin Rhoades
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Kevin RhoadesDirector-editor Kevin Rhoades edited a video of Blue Man Group's theatrical show with Final Cut Pro on a Power Mac G5.

Kevin Rhoades Marketing Director - New York KevinRhoades@tourdesign.com