Director's Intent

Cool Camera Gear
Dugdale shot the show with 28 cameras. And, he says, “While that might feel opulent and greedy to have that many, every single one has a role, a very real, good use.” And, notes Turnbull, “Dugdale and I have been lucky to work on some projects which let us push the boundaries of what you can achieve, filming a live show.” The decision to broadcast this show live, had much to do with those choices. “We had a lot of cameras, because we were going out live on one night. If we were only shooting material for a post-produced show, we might have had half that many, used over consecutive nights. The operators and cameras could have moved around, to capture different angles.”

The entirety of the camera and video technology was provided by a company called Funicular Goats, under supervision of Tech Manager James Coker.

Since the resultant product was a high quality, high definition broadcast, Dugdale and Turnbull opted to use studio cinema cameras for most camera positions, in this case, the Arriflex Alexa Mini LF, the company’s high resolution, large format camera.

For positions which were far from the stage—200 to 300 feet away—Turnbull informs, “There are no cinema lenses in existence for that length of throw.” For those (detailed below), box-type lenses, the type used for television for coverage sports, had to be used. “They were 1000mm. It was like the Hubble telescope,” says Turnbull. “And those lenses,” says Rhodes, “aren’t designed to work with LF, so you have to work with a camera with a smaller format,” in this case, using a special lens adapter with the Sony Venice 2, another film studio camera. Its resolution is 8.6K, which, when dropped down to a Super 35 format, delivers 5.6sK, “which was still larger than our broadcast deliverable of 4K.”

The show was recorded in three different ways: onboard the camera, recording a high resolution “LOG” format, and sending via cable back to the control truck, where each camera’s output was also recorded, as well. Dugdale’s switched live edit was also recorded, making it available for replay on demand for two months, following the livestream event.

Nights 2 and 3—Saturday and Sunday—were recorded with the full camera compliment, but Night 1, on Thursday, November 17, was recorded with just two cameras, in a special arrangement Dugdale came up with. One camera was mounted on a remote controlled dolly, moving in the middle of the stage, and the other was fixed to Elton’s piano, shooting directly down the keys, to get a unique image. “There were a couple of special shots that could not possibly be done normally, because those cameras would have been too visible to the other cameras,” Turnbull explains. “The audience could see them, and Elton could see them, but there were no other cameras filming. That was just some additional material that Dugdale wanted to record, for his post-produced edit.”

They first had to get approval from Elton, the director explains. “I said to David Furnish, ‘Look, this might be a totally ridiculous request, but I want to put this camera at the nose of the piano, slap bang in the middle of the stage, but it will move upstage and downstage, so that it’s tracking, giving a beautiful portrait vocal shot of Elton,’ something I don’t think I’ve ever really seen done in a live concert like this for Elton. He said, ‘Well, Elton isn’t a huge fan of cameras being a distraction or in his eyeline, but let me ask him.’ And the answer came back ‘Yes.’”

The remote dolly used was one called an Agito (full description below), on which an Alexa is mounted on a remote-controlled camera head on top of a column, which can be raised and lowered. The Agito (“Basically a 3’ x 2’ remote control car,” Rhodes notes), in this case, is running on rubber tires, was controlled by a pair of operators, one piloting the Agito and the other operating the camera and the column.

“It gave us this beautiful portrait of Elton, close up, so we see every ounce of emotion on his face,” Dugdale says. “But it also gave us a moving perspective—moving piano foreground, and a stunning quality of closeup, because it wasn’t shooting through all the ‘audience haze,’ like the long lens cameras from way back in the house,” referring to the heat haze generated by large numbers of audience members, picked up by the other cameras shooting across the audience. Notes Rhodes, “Night 1 was treated as an ‘extra’ show. There’s so much value in a camera with close proximity to the artist. And with a multi camera shoot, like on the other nights, that’s essentially impossible, because the other cameras will see it. So this got us that shot."

The piano cam, located near the right-hand end of the piano, also would have been far too obvious in a multi camera setup. “For broadcast night, we wanted that side of the piano clean,” says Rhodes. But, again, the proximity, versus the effects of heat haze, as seen in the images of his hands on the keys from the two other nights, makes a difference. “I didn’t use it a lot in the new cut,” the director says. “But there’s a noticeable difference in clarity, between shooting Elton’s hands from 2 ft away, from 6 ft away, versus 60 to 70 feet away.”

A pair of Agitos were put into heavy use on the following two nights, in this case, riding on a custom-built track, one covering Stage Left and the other Stage Right, moving about along their track, as needed, following the custom-designed curve of the front of the stage. “It’s part of my job to inject movement,” says Dugdale. “Since Elton is stationary on the stage, sitting at the piano the entire show, we move around him, rather than him moving around us. So I had two remote dollies in the pit—one working on Elton the whole time, providing a low tracking profile shot. And the other, on the other side of the stage, would be getting a moving shot of the band.” (A third camera can be seen in the pit—one of John Steer’s IMAG cameramen, separate from this system.)

While there are several similar products available to cameramen—and this one, to some degree, chosen because of a busy shoot weekend in L.A. making others less available—Turnbull likes the Agito because it’s flexible. “I’ve been using them more and more, because it’s a very modular system. You can run it in ‘low mode,’ with a remote head, sitting directly on the dolly base, or you can put a telescopic column on it, with a lift range of about 2 ½ feet, allowing you to shoot from belly height to eye level.

In addition, it can be run on a track, cabled or run wirelessly. Its wheels can be swapped out for large off-road wheels, if going over rough ground, or, in this case, for tracking wheels that run on narrow gauge rails. “It’s so well-balanced,” says del Russo, “it’s an almost effortless slide. It’s easy to move, easy to stop.” The Alexa cameras were mounted on stabilized heads, to absorb even the slightest bumps present.

The track, built onto a 4 ft substage, had to be built to spec, in this case by key grip Joe McKenna, out of custom-curved PVC pipe, to make sure it precisely hugged the curve of Stufish’s stage front.

The pair of operators, located in a tent under the left field “pavilion” seats, with other remote camera operators, operated the systems completely themselves, “TV style,” with foot pedals—shoes off, in their socks—to drive the Agito left and right, pedals for raising the column up and down, and hand controls for the camera. “It’s a lot of foot pedals,” Turnbull notes. And while sometimes an assistant will help with some of that, Rhodes says that, for broadcast, operators prefer to do everything themselves, if they can. “Shaun Harkins, who operated the Stage Left one, was adamant about operating it all himself. He just knows what he’s doing, and doesn’t want that beat of lag, from the director giving direction and him then telling another person, or having to catch another operator’s eye, to make sure they’ve both got the same idea, before they do the shot. He just wants to do it.”

If you were present at the show, or can see when watching on Disney+, the Agitos are constantly even in motion—even when a moving image from their camera isn’t being used. “Number one, you don’t want to stop it and get it in someone’s way for half a song, because they won’t be able to see Elton. But also, there’s so much movement in all the other cameras, it was great to keep them on the move, so that whenever Paul cut to them, they were carrying the energy through, and not just going to a static shot.”

Another piece of cool gear—actually, there were five of them—were the mini-Towercams—smaller camera stands, several feet tall, with telescopic columns, with remote camera heads (“hotheads,” as they are sometimes known) on them, which could be raised/lowered, turned and zoomed, by expert operators back in the tent. While the original intention was to simply place the hotheads on “Bazookas,” which are simply static columns, del Russo suggested, “Let’s put these on towers.”

“They’re brilliant,” says Rhodes. “They just look invisible. You put it next to a bit of musical equipment, you just can’t see it. You might see the camera head, but the tower itself is almost like a sheet of metal.” Such a device didn’t actually exist in the L.A. rental market, so Turnbull challenged a camera operator he knew, Dave Eastwood, to create one—and they did. “They’re really useful for getting those little shots you often want of a drummer or a keyboard player, where you just want the lens to move up and down a couple of feet, and be very discrete,” says Turnbull.

As mentioned, the operators for all such remote cameras—nine of them, including the Agitos—were set up in a tent put up in a truck compound, put together in Dodger Stadium’s Parking Lot A, Reserved parking lot. In addition, there were five or six trucks, including the production truck (where Dugdale and team worked), graphics, audio and others.

The Towercams were used on the stage, where, as Rhodes described, they needed to be essentially invisible, but still provide amazing images. One camera, Camera 20, was placed between drummer Nigel Olsson and percussionist John Mahon, on Stage Left, its job changing from night to night—on Night 2 it faced outwards, to Mahon, and on Night 3, show night, it faced inwards, cross-shooting Olsson, and getting a little bit of Elton in the background.

Such interaction was key to how Dugdale covers the performers. “Everyone in the band had a designated camera, to a certain extent,” he states. “But crucial for us was, where we could, to try to link the players with Elton. It’s a challenge, geographically, to try to relate someone at a piano to the other musicians. But we really focused on finding those moments where Elton’s looking at the rest of the band—or they’re about to finish a song, and Elton’s looking at Nigel. You can really tell the story about these two people, communicating. Or when Davey Johnston plays a guitar solo, and Elton’s just looking at him, smiling, watching him play. It’s like shooting a dinner party scene in a movie, where you’re just trying to get all those relationships between people. That’s what makes it human.”

Turnbull agrees. “These are real musicians. And they’re all vibing off each other. You want to see those relationships and their eyelines. You don’t want to just keep cutting to singles of each person. It’s great visually, when they’re stacked up against each other in shot, and you can follow their eyelines in real time”

Dugdale also avoids just closeups of playing, favoring more the human experience. “I never want the music to be like a music lesson, like tight on guitar strings or closeups of inanimate objects,” he says. “I’d rather see a guitarist with his eyes closed, with his head tilted back, than see a closeup of his fingers on the fretboard. Cause you can feel their passion.”

Two other Towercams, Cameras 22 and 23, were employed together, at the same position, but on the opposite side of the stage, between Olsson and bassist Matt Bissonette. Cramming the two rigs in that tight spot proved a challenge, as Turnbull noted on his scouting trip to the San Diego show. “There was so little room there,” he says. “I remember sending all those photos and measurements to everyone, going, ‘Well, this is how it is. Good luck.’”

The job of Camera 22 was to capture, on Night 2, closeups of Elton’s hands, as he played, and, on Night 3, to rise up a bit and, taking advantage of the 85-300mm zoom lens, capture both Elton and the audience beyond. “It’s really important to show a relationship between the artist and the audience,” says Dugdale, “because they act as a barometer, for people at home, to understand what it feels like to be at the show. That magic moment, between the artist’s music and the audience reacting. It’s not really a concert if there’s no audience. It’s where those two things meet that’s the most exciting thing to capture.”

There is a classic photograph, which all Elton fans know, taken by rock photographer Terry O’Neill at the 1975 Dodger Stadium show, looking out from just behind Elton, as he stands and greets the massive audience facing him. It was Camera 23’s job to replicate that very shot. “In researching the show,” Dugdale explains, “we kept seeing all those iconic Terry O’Neill photos, and we wanted to pay homage to that iconic image, ‘There’s Elton, at the piano, with the reverse, and you see the whole stadium.”

“We called it ‘The Terry O’Neill shot,” notes Rhodes. “Terry had jumped in there with his 35mm camera and gotten that shot, at touching distance to Elton, with a wide lens. And that’s why it’s amazing, because you feel like you’re there.” While Dugdale notes the concern of having a camera set up just upstage from an artist being visible to other cameras shooting Elton, Rhodes says, “We kept it fairly low a lot of the time, because it was about looking up and seeing the whole room, way to the highest, back row of audience, and silhouetting Elton against all of his front follow spots. If we had used a long lens on him, to try to get the same shot, we’d compress everything, and you’d never get the scale of the room. So we needed to diplomatically find a way into getting this camera positioned to be as close to Elton as possible, without getting told off by the tour. Luckily, they were really accommodating, placing it just in front of the keyboardist, by the bassist’s gear rack.”

Another camera, Camera 28, got a very specific, unique shot. Its job was to go along for the ride with Elton, whenever his piano platform moved across the stage. John Steer already had a camera mounted to Elton’s piano, for just such a purpose for his IMAG, but the quality of image of that camera wasn’t up to snuff for Dugdale’s use. “We had to replace their camera with ours,” del Russo explains. “It was a Panasonic, special ordered just for this use, and attached to the piano with a Magic Arm,” an articulated bracket. “We tried to hide it. It’s always a to do, when you want to put something on somebody’s instrument.”

Used only in two songs, most notably the important final number, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” Dugdale notes, “The closer I can get to Elton, the better. With stadium shows, where you rely on long lens cameras to get everything, because you’re so far away, you end up feeling like you’re looking through a telescope, on the far end of this enormous lens. And everything’s really flat, because of it. It’s a very unnatural way of looking at someone, because it’s like looking through binoculars. So for us to be able to be that close, and not distract him, was terrific.”

“We didn’t use it on Night 2, but decided on Night 3 that we should,” explains Rhodes. “We didn’t want to use it much, because it’s not as good a camera as the others. But it’s a compromise—better to have the shot, and it not be quite as nice looking, than not have the shot at all. It’s difficult to shoot a moving piano. And, with this, you’re watching it, going, ‘Is it moving? What’s going on?’ Because he doesn’t move, the piano doesn’t move, but the background moves. It’s quite confusing, in a way, but it works so well with the trippiness of that song, for that moment.”

Another camera which saw rare use, but, when it did see service, was super special, was Camera 21, one mounted on the canopy above Elton, facing down at his keys as he played. “It’s there for a bit of spice, to offer something different,” says Dugdale. “But never our ‘hero angle’ of him, by any means. But it’s really useful.” Ever conscious of his relationship with his operators, Rhodes notes, “The operator, Pat Gleason, did such a great job. And I felt guilty, because he kind of had the short straw, giving him not the most exciting camera in the show. But he kept pulling out those shots, where I just kept going, ‘How did he make that look so good?’ using different focal lengths and finding great frames.”

Legendary super percussionist, Ray Cooper, was captured by Camera 1, a Towercam located just to his left on Night 2. That camera was moved on Night 3 to the back of the stage, shooting outwards towards the audience, Cooper then being captured mostly by front-of-house cameras on long lenses, for the live broadcast.

Veteran crane camera operator Jay Kulick was brought in from New York to handle a 24 ft. “TechnoJib”—a compact crane with an extendable arm, set up on a substage, to raise it slightly, which could reach out in front of Elton or the other musicians. On Night 2, his rig was positioned off of Stage Right, more capturing Elton (or go behind him, to get a great Elton+audience shot), and on the following night, on Stage Left, to get a frontal shot of Elton and his piano, the musicians and guests.

“Jay’s brief—he was a bonus for us, because we knew he was going to get some gold,” Rhodes explains. “On one hand, he can’t be in the way of other cameras’ shots, sticking an arm in across the stage—it would kill so many opportunities in the edit. So he was quite reserved. Paul would cue him up—‘Okay, get in a good position, we’re gonna take a shot at the end of this verse,” which also let other cameras pointed at the stage know that it was going to be Kulick’s turn for a few moments. “He got some really nice moments, shooting through Elton onto the audience beyond. Or he could push the camera right up to the percussionist, or wrap around the front of the stage, or drop back and play it from the side.”

Notes Turnbull, “We could have had a big crane in there—there was room. But we felt it would be distracting in other shots. So this was a great way to go.”

There were two Steadicams in use—the floating camera system, which allows an operator to move a camera around by hand, with the rig absorbing his footsteps, making a super smooth movement. One was out in the audience (see below), but the other, Camera 12, was put to use on the stage, mostly following Elton when he got up from the piano to interact with the audience between songs.

“Rob Vuono, the camera op, would come up, at the end of a song,” reveals Dugdale, “and I really love that kind of intimacy that a Steadicam can give when you’re filming music. I often try to get a camera up close, handheld or Steadicam, working really close up to artists, and living in that moment with them. It’s just amazing, beautiful access and intimacy. And we would achieve that intimacy, without getting in the way of the music, and then step back out and give Elton space.”

Having that camera onstage, right behind Elton, means “Every other camera in the room, all 27 of them, no longer have a shot,” says Turnbull. “They’re all killed. But this is getting it. So it’s very important that the other operators are listening for their cues in their headsets—‘Get out of the way. It’s all about this camera now.’ And Dugdale’s very decisive that way. Very bold.” Adds Rhodes, “Paul only wanted to use Rob on stage very minimally, to not distract Elton. We were lucky enough to have that Agito onstage on Night 1, and not push our luck too much or risk distracting Elton.”

On occasion, Dugdale would give us a split second of, say, Kulick’s camera seeing the Steadicam’s operator, Rob Vuona, and his camera grip guiding him, before switching to Vuona’s actual shot he’s shooting in that moment. With 28 cameras, Rhodes notes, “As he’s getting into position, often some of the front-of-house cameras would see him, and then it’s just Paul’s choice whether to show that in shot, or try and avoid it.” Though, once in a while, it’s kind of cool to, momentarily, pull back the curtain a bit for the audience, and let them see how the magi i’s done.

Two true workhorse cameras were a pair located out in the seats, above the right field, looking towards Elton—Cameras 5 and 6. Considered the “sweet spot” position, Camera 5 was set up to get Dugdale a perfect 3/4 image of Elton’s face, as he played. “You want a 3/4 portrait, not a profile, like the front-of-house cameras would get, and be able to see both of Elton’s eyes, and the open side of his face, without the mic stand present. It was key,” the director states. “And it takes a lot of planning and work, and giving people cause for concern about how many seats we’re going to ruin.”

Optimally, Rhodes says, “If we had no consideration for the audience, we’d want it floating in the middle of the front 20 rows of the stage, about the same height as the stage, with an operator on a box, on a huge riser. And it would kill hundreds of seats, costing thousands and thousands of dollars.”

To find the exact spot that would work, Turnbull did lens calculations, as well as made use of his previz imaging. “The director had a very specific angle in mind,” he says. “The calculations showed that if we were zoomed in right to the end of the longest telephoto lens we could find, we would JUST be able to get the shot we needed, with this camera up in the seats. Luckily Dodgers Stadium agreed to lower the foul ball nets, as otherwise there might have been some interesting diffusion effects going on! There were many phone calls and meetings just about that camera, leading up to the show. It was a big deal to figure out.” Says Dugdale, “Achieving something like that, where the angle and height are so crucial for the perfect portrait, relies on a real collaboration between the venue and the promoter, so I was very grateful to them for helping us realize it.”

Camera 6, located somewhat above Camera 5, was also critical for getting a very specific shot. “You want to get that perfect reflection of Elton in the piano top,” Dugdale says. “It can’t be too high, and it can’t be too low—if you’re too low, his eyes will be missing off the end of the piano. And if you’re too high, you start seeing offstage stuff and technicians, etc. So it was a very precise, tricky thing to line up.” Again, Turnbull’s previz made it possible to have a look, and place the camera exactly where it needed to be to get the shot. A lot of work—or, as del Russo puts it, “A small act of Congress.”

Both cameras were ones which required the Sony Venice cameras and the long sports “box lenses,” described earlier, due to their distance from the stage.

There were four cameras located in the front-of-house (FOH) position—that is, around the part of the field, behind the field seats, where Matt Herr’s sound mixer and the lighting consoles were located. These were used to get good “Elton cam” shots—wide shots, showing him with the band, over the heads of audience members. “They provide a good first person perspective,” Dugdale informs. “When shooting music, you want to try to immerse somebody into the crowd, and just provide some movement—not just a lot of static shots. You can keep changing the perspective that way, which is more dynamic, and helps with the storytelling aspect.”

One last Towercam was also present there, set atop a whopping 42 ft Towercam rig, whose purpose was to raise the camera high enough to see over the stage’s canopy, and still be able to see Treatment’s video content on the main screen, which was above it. “From the FOH position, with a camera just high enough to see over the audience’s heads, much of the screen would be blocked by the canopy,” says Turnbull. “The show had content specifically commissioned for this tour, and we didn’t want to miss any of it. Dugdale was very concerned about representing that in our images.”