Jazz music video (first attempt)

A

activevoicing

New member
This is my first post, so please forgive any newbie-ness. I just wanted to get some feedback on a jazz music video I shot for The Claudia Burson Trio out of Northwest Arkansas. They've just released a CD, and the video is on their site:

http://www.cbursontrio.com/video/TresLargeProg.mp4

I shot this on 24p with the DVX100a. It's kind of no frills, documentary-style, because they wanted to capture the recording process as it happened (jazz never happens the same way twice).

Thanks for the input.
 
Re: Jazz music video (first attempt)

Hi,

For a first attempt, I think this looks pretty damn good. I'm a total jazz fan and was curious to see how you would film the performance.

This is just my creative input, so take it for what it's worth. In your posting you said the trio wanted to capture the recording process....which I think it was less than 50% of the video.

Most of the video was nature shots (fish, lake, streams, etc.). They kinda reminded me of "Deep Thought by Jack Handy". It was way more interesting when you featured shots in the studio. They were nicely lit and framed. I just wish you had more coverage in there.

In fact, the bass player was seen about only once or twice. And then most of the shots were single mediums or close-ups. It seemed to be shots of the flute guy for a very long time. I would've loved to have seen the trio playing off of eachother's energy (maybe a master shot or more two-shots).

Again, technically it looked great. My input was more on the editing or choice of shots.

For a first piece it was excellent work. :)
 
Re: Jazz music video (first attempt)

Thanks for the good comments. I agree that there should be more shots of the musicians.

Because of the "live" nature of the shoot, I shot one long shot of the song, and I covered my extraneous zooming, framing, and panning with the exterior shots. (I was still getting used to the new camera.) In another song I edited, I used cutaway shots from other songs or takes. However, the flute was only used in this song, and the drummer sat in with the rest of the cuts, so I had no other footage to pull from.

If I had it to do over again, I would have gotten another videographer to shoot with me so I could use more shots of the players. (This was essentially a favor for a good friend.)

I guess I should clarify my subject line. I've been shooting video for around 20 years, but mostly in news and corporate communications. This is my first attempt at a music video.

Thanks again for the input!
 
Re: Jazz music video (first attempt)

I agree. I tried to do a similar thing at a jazz session I was engineering here in Chicago. I got some nice shots and it served well as a memento but I really needed two cameras. The control room scenes and comments during take playback ended up the best.
The stuff you got looks good, nicely framed, good use of available light, and the sound was excellent. It sounded like a feed from the board.
Looking forward to more.
 
Re: Jazz music video (first attempt)

Thanks, larsrec.

FYI, the audio is from the mastered CD. I edited using natural sound from the onboard shotgun mic, then laid in the finished audio later.

I'd like to post another clip later, but there may be an issue with rights (this was an original composition). I'd love to hear any advice on getting synchronization rights to something like this for published tunes. It's fairly straightforward to pay licensing to make an audio CD of covers, but more tricky to find out how to legitimately publish a music video.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
 
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