Synching for a music video shoot

[dbssound1]

Hey there guys, I know this is the post forum, but I thought this would be the best place to ask.

We will be shooting a music video for one of are artists next month, and I do not know the proper procedure for running audio for this. I have done post work, but never the "during" video production work. My biggest issues are clock synch with the cameras.

I have pretty much any audio gear, but would prefer to us my Logic laptop fpr playback if that is possible.

The camera guys will be using HXV200s

Any and all suggestions on work flow and production ideas would be greatly appreciated!


Thanks, and I appreciate your help in advance. We usually just do recording and are just starting this part of the business, and well... I'm not quite sure how things should go!

All the best!!!

[philper]

The easiest thing to do is take an edit of the song (not even the final mix necessarily, just with the final timings and edit), put it on your laptop and play the music back on the set. At the same time send the audio to the inputs of the camera. The audio on the camera will be your guide track for editing. For a normal song length file for a video being shot on on a video camera that's really all you need to do.

Philip Perkins

[kk@jamsync.com]

When I shoot music videos, I make full song, full song minus intro, full song minus first verse, etc., sections all the way to the end. Then I add eight clicks in front of each section but make beats seven and eight silent. That way, I have clicks to align parts and if we need to concentrate on a verse, chorus, etc., we can. Or we can take from any eight bar segment to the end of the song. I play stuff out of iTunes from my laptop. The only problem with this is that you have to let the piece play for a couple of seconds before you stop or sometimes you'll revert to the piece above when you try to restart.

It really helps speed things along when you have a performer who is forgetting words to sections and starts to panic. I generally just use the camera mike, since it picks up the clicks really easily and I can move around the set with a hand held while we have other cameras stationary or on dollies.

I've worked with a couple of marginal performers who had to have lyrics printed on poster board (yes!) and telling them "That's OK, we can start right in at the second verse" really helped to settle their nerves. I'm not sure they performed any better, but the crew was a whole lot happier...

Oh yeah...having really decent craft services helps!! Don't skimp on this. Music people often bring a crowd with them (including kids!), so having stuff from breakfast burritos to lunch to late afternoon snacks really helps.

I especially love it when a relative comes to bend my ear about their way they would do a shot and I can just say, "did you try those great brownies over there? They are the BEST..."

[jayfrigo]

Originally Posted by kk@jamsync.com

I generally just use the camera mike, since it picks up the clicks really easily and I can move around the set with a hand held while we have other cameras stationary or on dollies.

Except for the high budget jobs, we usually use camera mic audio as well. Every camera lays down audio with it's video and you can easily sync wild to transient noises like KK's clicks, or even single pops for that matter. There's usually some sliding of shots here or there in editing just to get the feel right, but with the fairly quick cuts common to music, this works surprisingly well.

[beyarecords]

Originally Posted by kk@jamsync.com

I especially love it when a relative comes to bend my ear about their way they would do a shot and I can just say, "did you try those great brownies over there? They are the BEST..."

[soundguydave]

I would use my mbox and feed the audio out one side, and timecode out the other. You could feed the timecode into the camera in this situation. With my shoot, it was film and I fed it into the slate. Other than that I had plenty of markers marking out verses and choruses etc. I also had a click track I could play for intros to sections.