nateweaver

What is known as single-camera episodic TV these days is usually really at least an A cam and a B cam, with a 3rd C cam sometimes when it can be used. The reason you don't do more is because on things like this (as opposed to a live concert), accidentally seeing another camera cannot happen. Also, it's very difficult to light for more than 2 or 3 cameras so they all look good. This piece is a bad example of that, because the day was flat and I don't think they did much lighting (except in the closeups). I used to direct music videos in Los Angeles, that's why I can speak to it. So for something like this, you'd probably do 6-8 passes of the song, playing the whole song with 2 cameras rolling. Once you get a solid take of the performance from one "set" of angles, you jog the cameras around to get another set of angles. Rinse and repeat for a few hours. Then the director would have a few shots to "punctuate" the edit, (closeup reaction shots, sunglass toss, cigarette throw/cigarette land), some of which would be aided by playback of the song so heads/etc are bobbing in time correctly, some of which wouldn't need it. So you break the "large setup", and just get those shots separately. So the less cameras you have, the more passes of the song you need to do, but there is a practical limit to how many cameras you want to use. The more cameras you have, the more problems you run into.