May Erlewine — May Erlewine

Close-up of May Erlewine playing a sunburst acoustic guitar on a darkened stage at Wealthy Theatre

Capturing a songwriter's voice in a single take, then a full concert from four angles.

Client: May Erlewine
Year: 2023
Role: Content

A one-take Tiny Desk submission, a four-camera concert capture, multi-track audio, and live performance photography.

Montgomery Code is the production team touring artists call when they want to do it in one take. We plan the shoot around the music, then shoot, cut, and mix fast to hit the deadline.

1 live take
The full Tiny Desk performance, start to finish, with no cuts
24-hour turnaround
From the first shot to a mastered, submitted NPR entry
4 camera angles
Static and gimbal coverage of the full Sonic Lunch set

The Challenge

Live recordings allow no redo, so we planned every camera move before the first note.

Film a five-piece band without a single cut, then deliver it within a day.

May Erlewine is a Midwest singer-songwriter whose songs are meant for close listening, which makes a live room the best place to hear them.

For independent artists, an NPR Tiny Desk submission is a chance to be found. Entries live on YouTube, where the format has its own following, so a video that invites new listeners into her music keeps working long after it's submitted.

The video was planned as a single take. One camera had to move through the whole band while keeping May centered, and every move had to serve the song, not interrupt it. To stand out to NPR, it also had to carry the close, warm, and unfiltered feel Tiny Desk is known for, as if the viewer were right there with the band.

Our work with May caught the attention of Bank of Ann Arbor, which brought us in to capture her full set at Sonic Lunch, where she was joined by guests Theo Katzman, Antwaun Stanley, Lindsay Lou, and many others. The bank's free outdoor series draws an estimated 1,000 people to downtown Ann Arbor every Thursday in summer, so every angle had to work around a live crowd in the afternoon sun.

The Results

A one-take Tiny Desk submission, a four-camera concert capture, multi-track audio, and live performance photography.

Build a production plan that lets the song lead every camera move.

For May's Tiny Desk submission, we filmed the song in one live take, where a missed cue or a light stand in frame would send everyone back to the top. We mapped the camera's path to the song's form, moving through all five musicians and back to May on every chorus.

The band played in a circle at Wealthy Theatre, a 1911 cinema, so the lighting had to turn the camera's view into a front-row seat. One light behind the drum line keyed May across the circle and backlit the drummer, and LED sticks and the house lights, raised just enough, filled in the rest. Tiny Desk entries need a desk in frame, so we found an antique school desk to anchor the opening shot.

We shot and edited the video, Nick Nagurka engineered and mixed the audio, and we submitted it to NPR in under 24 hours.

At Sonic Lunch we brought four cameras, and with a crowd between them and the stage, we assigned every position before the first song. Static cameras held the wide angles, a rolling gimbal moved in close, multi-track audio captured each instrument on its own, and we shot stills throughout for a library of band and crowd photos.

Tiny Desk at Wealthy Theatre: May Erlewine (vocals), Theo Katzman (drums), Joel Gottschalk (bass), Dave Mackay (keys), Packy Lundholm (guitar), Nick Nagurka (audio engineering)

Sonic Lunch: May Erlewine (lead vocals, acoustic guitar), Theo Katzman (acoustic guitar, vocals, producer), Lindsay Lou (vocals), Rachael Davis (banjo, vocals), Michael Shimmin (drums), Packy Lundholm (electric guitar), Max Lockwood (bass), Joe Hettinga (keyboard, piano), Antwaun Stanley (guest vocals), Anthony da Costa (electric guitar, vocals), Brad Phillips (fiddle, violin)