You agree to charity work then panic “how am I going to cover a non paying event”…simple it may be non paying for the charity but professional cameramen or should I say reliable cameramen don’t come for nothing, you take a hit and get on with it. This was for a great charity called “Maggies” a charity that deals with cancer for both the patient and the carer.

The lads and two JVC 600 series camcorders, one Canon C300 for a locked off wide shot (11mm) and a roving Lumix GH3.

The JVCs worked well together giving us a good clean shot in low light at 0dB, Scott was using the Manfrotto 504HD, the C300 was on the stage on a Millar Solo ENG tripod with a Compact 25 head, Sean was using his JVC 600 on a Manfrotto 501 HDV and I had the Lumix GH3 and a light weight DSLR Manfrotto 500AH head.

The magic happened back at base when I was trying out the new multicam in FCPX for the first time. You choose your footage and by right clicking you are given an option to use multicam, FCPX then sorts out the various shots via their sound tracks and all camcorders are synced together…works like a charm…fantastic.

You have to be aware of the limitations of multicam even although I let all three cameras record simultaneously, at the editing stage it was not necessary. My advice is to film each dance then pause, this saves on card space but FCPX is far happier and accurate with a single dance than a whole one hours worth of footage.

The one thing that struck me was how close all three cameras matched, obviously the two JVCs were matched but the Canon and Panasonic both matched the JVCs without any grading !

Below is a small part of the 4 camera shoot just to let you see how cool multicam is in FCPX, my apologies for the crap sound I was given a “clean” feed from the desk only to discover it was far from clean !

Note : For anyone who was at the evening and wants a copy of the 43mins DVD you can email me your details to smallvideo@mac.com the cost is £10 includes 1st class postage.