Music Video

[Tom Elliott]

Dale,
What a great challenge/opportunity!
I assume that you will really learn a lot, especially keyboard shortcuts ;-).
I know that in doing "What About Now?" (title of the video I just finshed) that was a major skill and wall to over come. Paul Hoyle, my client, is mac based and he knew MY pc keyboard short cuts, so I was embarrasingly forced to learn. I am glad I did for the final cut (shown last night, Friday, Miami, Florida local time) went very fast. Also in learning those key board strokes, the current five hours of a wedding I did about three weeks ago has gone much smoother and quicker. The five hours was reduced to 90 minutes with a minimum of effort.
Oh, the best of all, when the music video was shown to the congregation of Temple Beth Or, it was .... well, let's say now I have a just a little idea about how it must feel to get the Oscar!! Right now if music videos is all I ever do, I will be a most happy camper.
The process of making the video was ... just great. I am basically a photojournalist and am accustomed to being a loan wolf, answering only to my own instincts. This video has shown me that being a part of a team, going for the same target, is one of the many aspects of being human all about.
Ok, ok, didn't mean to get all preachy or wet eyed ;-)
It was fun and I am looking forward to the next one.
I am getting up a list of people/venues that I want to show the video to.
Since it is NOT my video I do have to get permissions to show it off. Paul is doing the final credits and that will be the version that I will show. I am hoping that it will only be a few more days untill I can show it off.
The singer, Eliza, sold about 25 or 30 of the CD last night. Of course it was friends and so forth but I like to feel that the video had something to do with it. She is a talent. The six takes were in perfect sync and easy to sync up in post.
OH!! Yea!! Best news is that my CFO (my wife) has given the go ahead to upgrade my copies of PhotShop and Premeiere Pro 1.5. I have the 30 day trial of the latest Adobe suite. It will be put on the laptop this week end and guess where I'll be at two in the mornings those 30 days.
So, Dale, we all will be waiting and watching this thread, at least I will.
Yours,
Tom

[Tom Elliott]

Ok.
Here is a link to the music video.
http://www.tom-elliott-photography.com/Eliza_Video
I would like lots of input from all of you out there. The mainthing is I would like to have better quality for internet viewing.

[Dale Guthormsen]

Tom,

I am very impressed. I liked the contrast between the black and white sceenes and the color. I am not a great judge of music videos to be honest.

I noticed a couple times something covered over the top right corner of the screen.


Was the performer wearing the green top for a reason?? kind of blends in with all the green shrubery and such.

there was a shot I liked, did you move forward while you were zooming back or what??

Curiously, did you record the song independently or line up multiple tracks?

Hope I can do something as nice.

[Tom Elliott]

Dale,
Thanks for taking the time to view and notice things.
I get so close that I miss stuff. I will look again for the upperright corner "thingy"
I probably did move and zoom at the same time, though not intentional like Hitchcock.
I was given a master audio by Paul Hoyle. Then Eliza would sing in sync to each take (six - three studio blue screen three location woods). I had the actual take sound track to line up with the seperate good track, deleted the video track and then finetuned the seperate good sound to her lips. One of the "secrets" is to have the star actually sing so that you see the muscles in the face and throat work. If you just mouth it no stress shows in the face and even if in perfec sync it does not "feel" "look" in sync. Still experimenting with different web codecs to get the best playback on the net.
Paul knows his keyboard editing shortcuts, thus the pressure was on me to come up to his level. Glad I put in the effort for IT VASTLY FASTER using the keyboard.
Thanks again for taking the time.
Yours,
Tom

[Dale Guthormsen]

Tom,

thanks for the tip on having them sing, After watching your video I am also wondering if i can actually blue screen two other images into the amount of space.
any thoughts?

[Tom Elliott]

I don't really know, really know any exact steps to take so you can do it. I have a fictional story about the various ages of my star which would involved carefull casting.
Some possible obvious things to look out for:
1: Match quality and direction of the light in all the shots, blue screen or location.
2: Movement of the star in relation to the background/other takes I would assume one would have to be "Monk" like in tracking movements in all superimposed tracks: IE: panning right to left in the woods (if I were to redo my video) to match the movement of my stare same speed, same lighting, same general picture quality. If all is soft then each track equally visually soft.
BOY! My brain is hurting just getting the above down on paper ;-)
I can see why movies sets are closed to all except those involved and why it takes so long to get somposite shots done. Easier now with the computers but way back you had to wait for the labs to do their magic.
Now you can play with out busting the bank except for the time it is going to take to get all the pieces you need for the composites. In this case I don't think there would be possible to have too much preproduction planning.
As to enough space, I would rehearse with the star and other actors playing his other selves to get the composition down so you can leave room for the composite to work. You can resize the frames but I do not know how that will effect matching the quality and feeling of theshots.

Have fun by all means.
Yours,
Tom

[Dale Guthormsen]

Tom,

I thought of the lighting issues already. size issues have been a concern for me to be sure. But, your idea of working it out with sub actors for position and practice is a great idea I had not actually thought of yet!! I Had also thought of having him do walk ins to the sceene with a new instrument while he plays the background accordian or such. I am going to diagram it all out first. You are right that you can't plan enough for this one.
I have a bible camp promotional video I will start on in mid July and I will do some practicing on that. my day job seems to be getting in the way of my having fun!!
I have been working on presets, what a mind bender in itself. the learning curve has turned into a treacherous cliff climb, with an overhang at that!!

[Tom Elliott]

Dale,
It is not that I am an early riser ... I just go to bed late!! ! !
I have one heck of a "debriefing" for my first music video.
Once I knew what the words were and more or less the theme, the photography part was a snap. . . no pun intended.
Post, for me, was hell.
First the sync.
Then matching from scene to scene, not too bad, and it can always be better.
Getting a high to good cross platform resolution so my client can add his own credits.
He showed me, what he wants to be presented and I can do my copies myself.
An uncompressed AVI file of three minutes was 800MB!
I never did get a dvd of just a data file he could work with.
What we ended up doing was I printed to tape on my GL-2 and he then recaptured on his G4 Apple.
It does look goooood! And he really liked the DVD that played on his set top player for his family.
Just a straight 3 minute bit, no chapters, titles or credits.
The music CD is out and doing well.
Here is a link to the CD: http://cdbaby.com/cd/elizarose
Go there or be square. Go to the photos section and you will see yours truly, with the clap board and the young singer, Eliza. Yes that is my studio all of 22x20 feet plus a 7x14 working color/B&W darkroom. I have only used the darkroom three times since Hurrican Andrew and that was to teach my grandson how to make B&W prints.
Great group of people to work with. Now going the last quarter inch to get it out in the market ... well, that is VERY INTERESTING! Let me tell you, agents and buisness managers are worth their weight in gold. Let them suffer the slings and arrows of mankind, I just want to make film stories.
Here is the link on my site to see the video, and you might have better luck by just downloading the video and then playing it back:
http://www.tom-elliott-photography.com/Eliza_Video
Well, now to bed kiddies, for from tomorrow on through till next wednesday the inlaws are coming and going to be present when my grandson, Max, is Barmitz Vahed.
I of course am the unoffical still and video guy for the event.
Yours,
Tom