We were lucky to catch up with Carlos Hernandez recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Carlos thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

My mission is to film local bands full live sets with high quality video and audio to help them promote their music to a larger audience via social media.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hi, my name is Carlos. I go by BlursDream on instagram. I am a concert videographer and musician in my own band T.C.I.I.E. since 2015.

The reason I got into concert videography was first back in 2022 when I was trying to find a local venue for my band to play at for the first time. I was at my cousin’s wedding where I was seated with my nephew Jakob, who was 18 at the time, and I knew he was into music and going to shows so I asked about any local shows happening. He said he was going to a Halloween show called Frights For Jimmy 2 hosted by the band Funds For Jimmy. I went and enjoyed my experience so much that from then on I was at a local show almost every weekend.

My band did finally book a gig after I scouted multiple places. We played at the Klownski Lounge in Pomona on February 4th, 2023.

Over the course of us playing shows and me attending local shows I met so many promoters and local bands. Unfortunately my band went on Hiatus in June of 2023 and I was only recording my band at that point with some go pros and help from my buddy Pablo.

I started to notice that I was seeing these local bands play amazing sets and by the end of it only seeing a photo or story on Instagram after the fact. I was unemployed at the time and was looking for odd jobs here and there. I worked at a warehouse job temporarily that my old drummer Bryan had referred me for. After the 3 month contract the company decided not hire me or renew the contract. That weekend I was let go I decided to bring my cam corder to a local venue in LA called The Smell and record a band for fun. See how it felt to record a band for the entire set. I remember that night. It was Missing Wiba, Forsythia, & While We Sleep. Just me, my camcorder, and voice memos in my pocket. I enjoyed doing it and from then on recorded every band and show I went to.

From November of 2023 till now I’ve filmed at least one band every time I attended a show and posted that video to my YouTube channel BlursDream.

I basically provided a video of the entire set a band performed. I asked for donations in the beginning and was providing samples of my work to get future bookings to come film a band. It was like an internship essentially where I supported myself with unemployment checks from the jobs I worked over the years.

I had a really good Sony camera called the Sony A7R IV that I had used for music videos for my band but thought it would be destroyed if I brought to local shows. Then I thought why not bring it and use it for higher quality and maybe people will want to pay you for that. So I did.

What set me apart from other videographers is I actually went out of my way to make the audio sound good. I wasn’t gonna record a 30 minute video with lousy sound because then nobody would watch it all the way through. That’s what irked me about being called a videographer. They seemed to only care about the image on screen which is actually really easy to do. Good audio is what is hard and I would end up buying a recording device that I use to this day called a Zoom H6 field recorder with 4 inputs and one set of stereo mics on top for ambient recording. This vastly improved the audio quality and I would bug sound people to let me hook it up to the mix board to get a stereo feed. I would sync the audio recording to the video and I would have great sound. Over time I’ve had to get multiple adapter cables and xlrs for various audio consoles because they all have something different.

At this point I’ve figured out many ways to get good audio at any show. Backyard shows, venue shows, & any sort of DIY event which is what I prefer. I’ve also gotten into multitracking shows with my laptop which helps with better mixes.

At the end of the day I provide a high quality video with great audio of your band and will post it to my YouTube channel, which currently sits at 500+ subscribers. My goal is to make a living off of filming shows and giving bands great promotional material to push their music to a bigger audience via social media at reasonable price in this economy. I like to say I have Steve Albini’s ethos where he only take money for recording it. Nothing more nothing less. A mutual exchange. Without the bands I have nothing to film and the bands will play their music whether I’m there or not. Lots of venues and promoters forget that people come to see the band and not them. So same for me. People are subscribed to see the bands I film not me. Understanding your place in this field and in life in general will help you stay grounded and fight off delusions of grandeur. I love the bands I film. Keep making great music! The world needs to hear it and I will record it live so more people come to your shows.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Honestly getting to know the bands I film and making friends. I love seeing when a band posts clips from my video to their social media. The videos have also helped my band get more gigs and I love the community my videos have fostered over the year I’ve been doing this. I just want to be a part of a local music community. No competition. Too exhausting. All love.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

No story in particular but any failure I had when filming a show has been a lesson to learn. I basically set it in my mind that I will find out how to get good audio from a venue. Local venue in LA called The Smell in particular was very hard to conquer as well as a place called Coyote Studios in Boyle Heights. I had been filming shows at these venues for a while before I finally figured out how to get good audio every time. It was always hit or miss with those places. I just kept chipping away at it trying to figure out solutions. For Coyote studios I have to multitrack it with my laptop to get good sound. For The Smell it’s an expensive setup that requires two Zoom H6’s which are $250 a piece. When I conquered the sound at those venues I felt confident in my abilities as concert videographer. I had done those venues so many times and each time went away trying to crack the egg of how to fix the sound issue. So that just shows that if I don’t get something right I’ll keep trying till I figure it out.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/blursdream?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAabFR7DE_X_A5gkmtFdjrTx3oECqifakgND8efs7ynS-0V8ZMZTuXiOWB58_aem_D_nc3GSoNKLpiR6x3CWxbg
• Instagram: https://linktr.ee/blursdream?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAabFR7DE_X_A5gkmtFdjrTx3oECqifakgND8efs7ynS-0V8ZMZTuXiOWB58_aem_D_nc3GSoNKLpiR6x3CWxbg
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@blursdream?si=336Zu-KfG6d1R041

Image Credits

Carlos A. Hernandez
Ryan Gomez
Bella Villa