how to shoot and sync a music video

Schmovies production

Schmovies production

Well-known member
Hi all,
i have the occasion to shoot a music video when i, ehm, realize i dont know how to do it technically.
How do i sync the shots? I assume i shoot with a base then i place in the timeline the whole original song and go through the hell of lip syncing all the shots to the song.
Is there a method?
Anticipated thanks,
p.
 
Pretty much what you just said. Obviously make sure you have playback on the set so they're lip syncing correctly, but otherwise it's just a matter of cutting the video to match the music.

It does sound like a right pain. Maybe that's why most music videos have a tendency to show footage other than the singer(s).
 
Here's how I do it.

You're editing technique is right. You simply sync the clips to the mastered version of the song that they've given you. However, here are some tips to do during production and post that will save you a lot of time.

Before you go to shoot your first scenes, take the audio file and add three or five loud (test tone loud) bleeps, one second apart leading into the song and use that for playback on location. That way, not only will your talent have a good cue when to start performing, but if you leave your camera mic on, you can use the waveform of the three loud bleeps (yes, you'll need to capture the audio too) to match up with the waveform of the song in editing (of course when you finish editing, you cut off the beginning of the song with the bleeps).

Also, what I do (just my way of making it easy) is I lay each whole take down (using about 10 video tracks), one over another, that way everything is already syncronized, and then if you want a certain part of a take to play during a certain part of the song, just cut that section of video in each track and delete the tracks above and below the clip. In the end, after my edit, I drag everything left down into the first track to make it easier. I hope that makes sense. If not, I'll post a screenshot of my work flow, but those tips should help.

P.S. I've heard that every foot counts for 1ms delay (again, I heard, not sure), so it's important to get your playback audio as close to the talent as possible without obstructing the shot. Also, remember, maybe run a mic close to the audio playback area that goes back into your camera so that you can get a good clear recording of the music for syncronizing later (pointless if the sound is to faint to hear anything).

*Edit*

Here's a picture of my workflow for music videos.

1180481285.jpg


Notice everything is already sync'd up, so it's just a matter of taking the parts of each take at the part of the song I want to deleting the other clips. This is just my way of doing it. I'm sure there are others that use timecode and all that other stuff, but I'm a one man band, so I know my way of organizing things. ;)
 
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Here is my two cents on the music video techniques. Here is my video I shot.

http://redantdc.com/gl/article.php?story=20060110003840133
Shot with a DVX100

The challenges of my shoot were that
1. There was no crew , just myself and the band.
2. It was a remote and hard to get to location requiring a generator.

We were using a ghetto blaster to sync to which seemed loud enough at the time but it wasnt until I was editing the footage that I realized the syncing was really sloppy. I was happy with framing of the shots etc. but i wasnt happy with the performance of the band.

If I could do it again I would have
a) brought at least two grips to help move gear and lights
b) used a much louder sync track for them to perform to so they could feel it and be 100% on the mark. ( Unless of course you want them purposely to be out of sync and apathic to the track.. which could be a look that you want )
c) brought an assistant director to catch problems with the performance.

When your operating a camera sometimes its difficult to watch for performance because your concentrating on framing the shot and executing camera movement. So you either need to get someone else to operate the camera or have someone who can watch performance and catch any obvious problems with it. Every artist is different. Some might not require any direction and some might need a lot. If they need a lot of direction I'd suggest using a DOP to free you up to direct.

Garnet
Red Ant digital creativity
www.redantdc.com
 
Here's something I've been thinking about doing for low budget music videos, but haven't tried it yet to see if its worthwhile.

Basically put the music track in a timeline that you will work with later, and print it to tape so that the time code is locked to the time code of your timeline. Bring this tape to set and play it back with a clamshell or other camera. Use it as a reference to Jam sync the camera(s) you are shooting with via firewire - so that the timecode of each record take will jam back to zero and be locked in to the reference audio and simplify editing.

this could be a pain if you're using a tape based recording format or offline editing for an online late, but it could be ideal for a low budget p2 shoot. With the HVX you loose a couple of frames with the jam sync so it wouldnt be dead on. Actually the whole thing is probably more trouble than its worth, but could be interesting to experiment with.

The three beeps is a more traditional and widely used solution.
 
The way I run it is if I'm doing a shoot for a 'live' music video, I'll get a line from the desk or chuck a mic in front of one of the speakers or foldbacks (obviously so its not visible) where playbacks coming from and run that into the right audio channel and keep location audio on the left. If I'm shooting a part for a 'story' music video or story part, then I'll just run the ghetto blaster. Sometimes I put in a count in to help with sync in post.
Then in editing, you just gotta sync them up, which usually isnt too hard...
One tip, if you're shooting a live clip where there's audience, I would reccommend shooting closeups when the audience is not there, then letting the artist have a break and then bring the audience in for long shots and inserts. Gives the artist a chance to cool off and the others can take breaks while ones having a close up done. Reason I say this is because one shoot we did, we had the audience come in and we shot close ups, inserts, and long shots with the audience there, and only gave the artists a 3-5 minute break in between each take. What we found in editing was that each take, everyone got sweatier and sweatier, so we couldn't use the takes from the start of the day with the takes from the end of the day, ending up in a useless shoot.
 
A band that i'm a part of did a music video a while ago. When they filmed the song in 60p or something, the band played the song at 2x speed. In post, the music was added from a normal studio recording. Then they slowed down the video by 50 %.

Really cool effect.

And also the band members where wearing black clothing. And as backgound when filming, a totally white smooth white background. In post the movie was overexposed, nice effect that aswell.
 
Be sure to have the band practice playing at a faster speed. They always say they do, but they always seem to spend a great deal of time on set learning how to play the song faster...
 
a few tips. if you have the capability, much of the footage in music videos are shot in slo mo. gives you the option of speeding it up to normal in post and having hip slick and cool slo-mo shots in your video. also, using a Click Track will help the artist to perform in sync if you can spare a couple hundred bucks to have one made.
 
A click track costs nothing to make on a computer using Audacity, a metronome costs less then £15! What gave you any impression that it costs a few hundred bucks?
 
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