PMC Unpaved Fireside Chat

The Night

The night before PMC Unpaved, the Pan‑Mass Challenge’s gravel ride in the Berkshires, riders gathered by the lake at Camp Mah‑Kee‑Nac in Lenox for the event’s first fireside chat. Meredith Beaton‑Starr of the PMC sat down with Dr. Ben Ebert, President and CEO of Dana‑Farber Cancer Institute and a PMC rider himself, on a stage lit purple against the dark.

They talked about why research is moving faster than ever, a pancreatic cancer breakthrough with PMC funding behind it, why philanthropy is what lets young scientists chase the ideas a federal grant never would, and Dana‑Farber building its own cancer hospital. Then the riders got the microphone for questions.

The Shoot

Three cameras and a drone covered it for Snowcap Productions. I ran two of the cameras: the locked two‑shot of the stage on my Sony FX9, and the Sony a7 IV that gave the edit both speakers’ close ups and the questions from the crowd. A roaming handheld camera worked the audience, and the drone took the lake and the stage from above as the light went. Sound came from one recorder off the stage mics, not the cameras.

The Edit

I synced the three cameras and the drone to the recorder and cut it as a live multicam, a speaker’s close up when they make a point, the two‑shot when they talk to each other, and the crowd when a line lands. The stage mics came in low, so the dialogue was rebuilt and leveled to streaming loudness. The finished cut went through several rounds of client notes, mostly about when the drone helps and when it gets in the way, and runs just under half an hour from the sunset over the lake to the night wide at the end.

Watch & Links

Watch on Vimeo → The Pan-Mass Challenge → The PMC Unpaved Living Proof Toast →