That's pretty much all I shoot. Use the white balance shift and shift it a little toward the blue and NEVER manually white balance. ALWAYS use the tungsten setting.
Don't even attempt to use zebras or the videos will come out too dark every time.
A good monitor that is well calibrated is best. Go by that and not the zebras.
Of course use manual focus and use the optical image stabilization even on a tripod.
You can leave the spotlight setting on and still use the manual exposure to reduce hot spots, but it throws off the exposure slightly. Don't ride the exposure wheel too much to get the brightest image every time. It will create too many post production corrections.
Go to rehearsals and learn where the actors will be so you can shoot closer and avoid the phosphorescent heads.
Avoid getting too angry with the idiot kids they put behind spotlights and soundboards.
John

John, you use image stabilization? I've had way to many problems with it. During a non-panning shot, having the characters move on stage makes the whole stage drift slightly in the opposite direction. I find it very disconcerting. I have much better luck shooting without it and being as gentle and smooth as possible on my camera movements.

I do agree that manual focus is a must! Most stage shows don't have enough light for autofocus to work well. It's also heartbreaking to have the camera suddenly pick focus on the head of a tall person sitting in front of you and blur the stage.

One thing i often ask for, but almost never get, is to tape a runthrough of the show with ambient worklights on. This fills in the shadows and reduces the contrast between the dark stage and the highlights. The video camera can pick up a much better picture this way. And if you really get your way, you get a shoot with no audiance so you avoid all the coughs, sneezes, and paper rustling. Also, if the actors mess up, they can go back and do the line over, allowing you to edit it out later. While i can rarely ever get a group to do an extra runthrough this way, sometimes i can talk them into doing the dress rehearsal with worklights on.

To state the obvious, better cameras.
One of my clients shoots this kind of stuff on a 570 and the difference is dramatic. We do charge good money for our product that pays for the good cameras. If you can beg, borrow or hire a 1/2" or 2/3" camera, if only just to feel the difference it makes, you get not only more latitude but a lower noise floor.
One dance production we did last year was black dancers wearing white against blackout cloth, The only lighting was slashes of very intense light. That one show convinced me of the value of better cameras. You do need to spend a bit of time with this kind of kit though, you get way more image control that does have a practical use.
Failing that, several cameras can help. Have one set for the brightest possible lighting etc.
Bob.

John,

My answer will show my amateur leanings, but I do at least one of these type events every year, usually for my church which does an extensive series of dramas during Lent.

I shoot with VX2000's, usually backed up with a Digital 8 for wide shots unless I can borrow my friend's VX as well. I've tried using the Custom Preset which allows more subtle changes in exposure, but the lighting changes are usually too extreme for the CP to cover.

This year, I'v e purposely underexposed with the assumption that I can brighten with Levels and Curves where needed, and it seems to be working OK. If the actors are really brightly lighted, you have to accept that you will have to lose the background. That's OK - much better than burning out a face.

Try to get to a dress rehearsal - record everything. I use bits and pieces to plug in where needed.

Now for the really amateur part - don't agonize over details. These are amateur productions, and you are a crew of one. Parents are thrilled to see their kids on DVD. You can spend days perfecting stuff that few, if any, of the viewers will appreciate.

Sound is more important than video IMHO. If your sound is very good, you can be forgiven for a host of video problems.

RalphM

I couldn't agree more with the last part, sound is almost everything and it's what makes the difference between rank amateur (as in stinks) and amateur (as in doing the best you can within a budget).

If people spent 50% of what they spend on cameras etc on audio gear their work would be 500% better.
Your clients will mostly likely have many photos of their kids, probably even a few happy snappies of their kids in costume on the night. The sound of their voice is another matter.

Bob.

Image stabilization hasn't caused me problems. I can't shoot tight zoomed in and keep the camera from jiggling especially if I have to pan fast. You have to know the blocking for the show. That means attending several rehearsals. Some of the others who posted should also note that the original poster said "high school" show, not a professional show. It's a whole other world when working with a high school.

I gave up running sound from the back of an auditorium for the reasons mentioned above.....coughing, sneezing, teenagers talking, kids crying, dumb parents louder than the kids trying to stop them from crying, etc.

I run mikes above or across the stage to an MXB1002 mixer then an XLR cable up to the camera. I usually use AGC. It varies with the nature of the performance. I have gone 100 feet with no hum (watch the lighting cables though). I take post fader body mike feed from the soundboard and record every night's performance into a minidisc deck. In post I use those to augment any weak vocals if I need to.

Not sure why your CP setting on the VX2000 isn't working. I have mine 2 notches to the left. Contrary to what a lot of people think, stage videos usually come out too dark, not too light. This is especially true when they end up on DVD. It comes from zebras and - or overcompensation for spotlights. You can always try the spotliught mode combined with manual exposure to reduce hot spots, but avoid closing down the lens too much. It will be too dark.

John

Farss, have you tried comparing that camera to the DVX100 or HVX200 or similar cameras?
The DVX100 has the different gamma modes that allow you to extend its exposure latitude without the use of video knee. I dislike video knee because it tends to mess with the colors (color shifts, desaturated highlights). And it seems that this is what the DSR-570 would do.

On the higher end, cameras like the HDC20 (1080i DVCPRO) allow you to adjust the gain setting to get extra highlight detail out of it (I haven't looked that closely into it though, it may cause bizarre color shifts). They F900 seems to have the broadest amount of controls of any camera (other than cameras that record uncompressed... i.e. Andromeda modded DVX100). Usually the lower priced cameras don't allow the user much control over the camera settings, but it seems like the Panasonic cameras offer the most control on the low end (even the Panasonic DVC30). Some of the latest generation cameras on the market also offer controls over gamma response too I believe.

I rarely shoot footage myself but post a pretty wide variety of material so none of my comments would constitute a fair test.
Then again I've worked with material from a wide range of cameras, from Hi8 to DigiBetacam and everything that I've seen just proves that bigger CCDs and better glass win everytime.
I've never posted anything from a DVX100 (not knowingly anyway) but the Dixie Chicks concert DVD shot on DVX100s is simply appallingly bad, that DVX100 users would push that as an example of how good the camera is, is laughable. The level of noise in the blacks is just horrid, totally unacceptable. Keep in mind that despite that I nearly bought a DVX100!
For the live performance one client shoots everything in 16:9 on the 570, sometimes with a PDX10 as a B camera but intercutting the two you can sure see the difference. Even between the 570 and a PD150 the difference is very noticeable under extreme lighting.
The problem as I see it isn't so much how much you can tweak what comes out of the CCDs in camera, it's what comes out of the CCDs to start with. Push the gamma up on the output from the small CCDs and up comes the noise, I deal daily with the same problem with audio, add compression and the noise hits you. As to how much the black knee setting upsets the color balance, for this kind of work, what is the color balance supposed to be? With mixtures of lighting sources and everything gelled to hell so long as it's colored you might be doing OK. One sequence from a year ago the talent were wearing silver satin lit deep blue and being flashed with stobe lights, that really spun everything out, nightmare to encode. I recall posting about the problems I was having.

Now some might wonder why my obsession with noise. Well start encoding the video for DVD and you see why, we regularly encode at under 4 bits/sec and with low noise footage not a problem. With noisy blacks the resulting frozen noise pattern is just aweful to look at, very distracting.
The other problem with low end camera for live stage events are servo driven lenses and useless viewfinders. We're quite often at the back of the auditorium so we need long lenses and very accurate focusing for tight shots. We've tried shooting opera in the Sydney Opera House with the GYD 500 and although that cameras got more image tweaks than most at that price point and does pull a good image for the money it's still being stretched. One opera was covered by both ourselves and a news crew with broadcast DB cameras. They let us use their footage and again the bigger CCDs and glass makes all the difference. We've also tried shooting opera with a Z1, the improvement in res is good but the lens is too short and the candlelit scenes were, well a disaster.
I don't want anyone to think I'm saying very good images cannot be had from cheaper cameras. This kind of work is extreme. Everything is being pushed to the limits, you're working in near total darkness, no space for external monitors, no clue as to what's going to happen next, lighting wise or anything else for that matter, also you need a recording format that'll run for at least 90 minutes, 120 is better for safety. Batteries need to hold up for that long as well. And time can be a problem, you might not get into the venue with more than 10 minutes to curtain.
I guess it's a bit like ENG, get the cleanest, usable image no matter what. It'll probably not be a great image and hopefully it can be made a bit better in post. One things for sure, there's precious little time to be fiddling with camera settings, you can't stop the show for another take and you can't shoot it again, you blow changing a camera setting and that's what's recorded to tape for Bob to fix.

Bob.

"I couldn't agree more with the last part, sound is almost everything and it's what makes the difference between rank amateur (as in stinks) and amateur (as in doing the best you can within a budget)."

I always capture as many sound sources that I can. Stage mics, camera mics and house mixer. I've has parents buy my DVD because they can hear the talent.

I've had some parents buy my DVD because my audio is better than the house.

Steve Mann

I've had some parents buy my DVD because my audio is better than the house.
=========
Ain't that the truth.

Steve,
Have you messed wround with Surround soundtracks (non-discreet channels) for the shows? I am in the process of doing that now. Not sure if I will deliver it that way or not. It fills the room nicely though and gives the impression of an auditorium in the living room.

I have been experimenting with the soundtrack with and without LFE and with and without the Center Channel (phantom center). There don't seem to be enough settings for the LFE in the Vegas software. The lowest cut in I can generate is 80 HZ and that doesn't even seem accurate in actual use. It ends up much higher even when using that setting.

John