Cheap way of making a music video
 

There's a big charity thing happening in the UK soon and someone in my office has decided that we'll write a and produce a song, make a video, sell it and all proceeds go to charity. I've been asked to help with the video. Notwithstanding the creative bit (I normally do wedding videos) - I guess the way to do this is:

Play back the final CD thorugh a portable hi-fi and get people to sing/play along. Record that sound through the mics.

In NLE (Vegas) - lay down the audio from the actual CD and then line up all the shots using the sound recorded on the shoot.

Then use multicam, etc to select the shots to cut to.

I'm using a SOny HVR-Z1E.

I can't think of an easier way to do this - any tips most welcome!!

Cheers

Ian

Yep, that's how I do it. If there's an easier way I'd love to know.

I'm hoping to do a music video as my next project and this is the way I was going to go about it as well. Should be pretty easy.

Thanx guys.

I think you can do something with timecode to help sync things - but no idea how to do that or what equipment is needed so will stick to the above method.

Ian

Make a special audio CD version of the song with a loud, 1 frame (25th/sec) burst of 1Khz tone just ahead of the actual song.

Then on your guide tracks, when you mark and in point to sync to on the multitrack, you can easily find it as a spike in the audio waveform. Makes syncing much easier.

Using TC as a way of synchonising would require a TC track slaved to the music (which would require something more professional than a CD player, a DA88 or similar) and a camera with TC in, which the Z1 doesn't have.

Mind you you might want to think about playing back as a audio clip from a Laptop or something - you'd be surprised how much a domestic CD player can drift. I've found in the past they're not as accurate as computers or digital camcorders.

Hi Dylan

Thanx for the tip on using a laptop.

I don't fully understand how the tone at the beginning of the track will help if I'm filming different shots at different sections of the song?

They've now decided that might want it filmed Band Aid style - ie filming the actual recodring. This worries me a liitle bit because if they mess about with say, the speed during mixing, I'm, er stuffed!

Ian

It's all about the set design and costumes, but esp. the set design.

heath mcknight

Three beeps of 1k tone are put at the head of a playback tape so everyone knows when the song will start. One, two, three...

Re: timecode
If you were shooting film you would use a time-coded tape in conjunction with a time-code slate board for playback during the shoot and to enable you to sync your rushes in the edit - the same timecode would be on your master sound so you can easily maintain sync on each shot.Since you're shooting tape there's really no need to worry about this.

In terms of slipping sync on playback again, you really don't need to worry about this - this was really only a problem with analogue playback. A CD will be fine, just make sure whatever you use is very, very loud.

Ever see the old movies about movie sets where the guy would come out before the shot and clap a chalkboard clapper before the director yelled "ACTION!"???

That's what they were doing then: Making a sharp audio sound so the audio tape could be sync'ed later with the film.

You can do the same thing by clapping your hands in front of the camera, banging on the pot, or even buying a clapboard in a movie supply house.

Not so old. This is still how it's often done. In fact it's a good thing to do every once in a while with video just to check nothing is drifting.

You can, but not in this case as they are only recording the playback tape as a guide for editing but that is certainly a technique I've used many times in the past for sync sound - I once shot a hip operation on 16mm - we synced the rushes by lining up the surgeon hammering away on the joint with a steel mallet and chisel. Nice SFX.

Ian, the beep would show up as a spike on the waveform, and so be easier to find than slipping and sliding audio until it matches, which might seem easy but could easily take up a lot of time. With the beep, you simply zip along to where you see the spike , mark it as an in point, and then syncing for multiclip should be easy (assuming Vegas can sync multiclips this way).

However if you're not always recording from the start of the song you're right it wouldn't help. I assumed you'd film each angle as an entire run through of the song.

Liam, a CD SHOULD be fine, but I've had experience of shooting to CD playback and slippage has been noticable over even a 3 minute song. I guess it depends how good the CD player is.

Hi Dylan,
What you're describing, as you no doubt know, is a sync plop - 1 frame of 1k tone placed 48 frames before first frame of picture. These were used in film dubbing suites to sync all the sound tracks together. They're still used today sync the optical sound on a cinema release print.

Yes, over three minutes it can and often does drift. But, on a pop video where you're cutting every second and editing on a NLE it's not really a problem.

Cheers,

Liam.