Byron Bay, Australia (26-Apr-11)

I am biased, but my rating is primarilly due to the extremely watchable nature od this production. The circulating version is infact the second version...the first which was shared among a few people for comment didn't have crossfades and only had a few clips from other filmers. Fortunately for the second version a lot of extra footage became available to make a true multicam exterience.

So to a bit about the shots...

The base footage by From The Shadows was filed using a Canon G11, with the focus/zoom locked to 5x optical, prefocused of the area Bob was in, and with spot metering to avoid spot washout. The first two and a half songs were very steady as the camera was nestled in the crook of the filmers arm and the screen on to keep track of what was being filmed, however this was a bit obvious and the security guard motioned to turn it off, however all the fimler did was to close the screen...the G11 has an optical viewfinder, so the camera kept recording. The down side was that the rest of R&T was not filmed. TUIB was only filmed with about a minute of grabs spread throughout the song as the filer was filming blind..ie not looking thru the viewfinder...for the next three songs it was a matter of aiming and carefully checking the part opened screen..Bob's hat is a godsend here assist stands out on the screen even at a sharp angle..but there is a fair bit of wandering...for Desolation Row, the camera was held at eye level as though still photos were being taken...with the screen closed, hisb was done for half of SD, when the filmer turned the video off to take still photos to keep up the pretense, and didn't come back to video untill H61. BOTM and LARS were filmed the same way as Desolation row, and the camera was retired for FY to help avoid attention.

Now thanks to many friends in Bobland a number of alternate videos came to light, some filling gaps in the original filming, GCMYOT, IAMB R&T meant multicams for these...and the complete R&T, 4 copies of TUIB and a fragment from YouTube meant this became a four camera shoot...2 extra SOTW shots made this a genuine thre cam shoot and an extra DR made this a 2 cam shot. Footage of H61 filled the gaps and the amazing BOTM footage as well as extra LARS completed the multicam footage. Add in a bit of Fy and a fragment of SD and that about completes it...for the rest a pseudo multicam version was made, by zooming in on the original to simulate the camera's digital zoom and give close ups...this was done a couple of times for each song in the original footage to give a multicam effect. All this was synchronised to an early mix of audiowhores recording..the cd version is improved..but there were issues in synching it as it seemed to creep and get out of synch..so it was decided to leave it as is. The olny song without any footage was STOF and a collage of screen geabs, and photos taken during that song were used...same for the end of SD...for FY a video collage from the show...converted to B@W and slowed down was used to fill in the unfilmed bit.

as to the show it was great, the more i lsten to it the better I realise it was and the more i realise how good Bob's voice actually was.

This is an unusual Bob dvd due to all the footage...camera's are allowed at bluesfest so still pics can be taken...as can video on the standard camera (unofficially)...after all who knows what you are shooting...so there is a wealth of material out there.

I would like to think that it is a very watchable product.