NEP captures desert trip festival with Fujinon 4K lenses

Camera Operator Alan Vitt with the UA80x lens shooting during the Desert Trip concerts.

Musical events like Desert Trip – back-to-back weekend concerts held October 7, 8, 9 and 14, 15, 16 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, CA, featuring classic rock music royalty — don’t happen every day. Promoted as “the concert of the century,” it generated ticket orders from every continent except Antarctica, with attendees travelling far and wide for a chance to see many of their favorite musicians play live together.

Making sure everyone experienced the iconic event with as much multi-media splendor as technology could provide necessitated 4K imaging. HD video and webcast production company Springboard Productions, led by music industry vet Hank Neuberger, tasked renowned mobile truck provider NEP with video acquisition and display duties.

NEP’s Cobalt served as Desert Trip’s mobile production truck, and NEP’s Screenworks supplied three of the large, audience display screens. The event was shot and ISO recorded in 4K, while the screens received a 1080i signal. The full concert will edited together in postp roduction. All the content was recorded onto 34 Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Studio Pro 2 disk recorders.

“For acquisition on the Sony HDC-4300 and PMW-F55 CineAlta 4K cameras, we wanted to supply as many 4K lenses as we could,” said NEP’s Glen Levine, Co-President, US Mobile Units. “10 of the 14 cameras used during Desert Trip had 4K lenses. FUJIFILM was a huge help supplying seven of the 4K lenses used. Two of the 4K lenses were UA107x8.4 4K UHD lenses. That lens looked outstanding.”

In addition to the two FUJINON 107x’s, NEP also had one UA80x9 4K 2/3-inch lenses, along with three UA22x8 and one UA13x4.5 4K 2/3-inch UHD portable zooms on Cobalt. The two UA107x lenses were positioned at center house and centre tower. The UA80x lens was placed off stage right, the UA22x lenses were used directly on the event stage, and the UA13x4.5 was on a jib device.

“We greatly appreciated the support from all the folks at FUJIFILM in helping us produce such a high-quality show. We’re all looking forward to seeing the final edited version of this historic concert.”

NEP has utilised FUJINON lenses extensively in the past, including for Grammy Award telecasts, production of the hit show The Voice, the Masters Golf Tournament and CBS Thursday Night Football.