Music Video Question

Michael Nice

Michael Nice

Member
I am starting pre-production for a music video, my first by the way, and I want to have both the band's performance and a storyline to go with the song. My question regards the syncing (sp?) up of different takes of the performance to the cd audio track. in short what is the best method to go about shooting a performace scene for a music video and have all the camera angles and shots match the audio in post?

Thanks

Michael Nice
 
I would take a feed from your playback system and feed it into your camera and use as a scratch track. This way, when you start editing your video to the master CD track, you will have a clean scratch track for sync.
 
What I've done for low budget videos is to take the song from the bands CD into an audio editor (I use Bias Peak) and then add 3 one second 1k beep tones at the heads and tails of the track, then burn that to CD. I play this back from a portable boom box close to the camera and record the audio into the camera's mic,. I set up the various angles and get the band performing the whole song at each set-up.

In post, I place the song, with beep tones into the timeline and trim it to the first frame of the first beep tone. I then trim every video track to the same spot. This way, I know that 3 minutes, 10 seconds and 4 frames into the video clip will match 3 minutes, 10 seconds and 4 frames in the song. You still might have to adjust sync a frame or two here and there (inexperienced muscians may miss their cues). BTW, the beep tones at the end of the song are there to check your sync, if you need to.
 
Here is a useful tip that I got right here on DVX User!

I took the audio track into my NLE (FCP) and gave my timeline about 5-6 seconds of preroll with beeps and tone, then I put a timecode generator effect against a black background at 01:00:00:00. I then created a quicktime movie and put this on my laptop (or portable DVD player or TV, whatever you have) and at the beginning of each shot I would play the track and shoot a few seconds of the laptop screen and match up the numbers in post. This works just like a smart slate, plus it gives you the advantage of being able to start anywhere in the song.
 
Great Stuff, Thanks Guys! oneinfiniteloop, When you say you are match up the numbers in post, what numbers are you matching, and is the band using this same video with the TC as a playback on set to lip sync to?
 
That is my plackback track. I run the outputs of my laptop to some on-set speakers and use the laptop quicktime vid as my master playback track. This way that timecode is in perfect sync with their performance (now, only if the bands were that perfect!) and then in post I take the video and line up the tc with the tc on my timeline that I originally created the timecode video sync track in and wahla! Problem solved...do a little test, it works quite nicely.
 
oneinfiniteloop said:
That is my plackback track. I run the outputs of my laptop to some on-set speakers and use the laptop quicktime vid as my master playback track. This way that timecode is in perfect sync with their performance (now, only if the bands were that perfect!) and then in post I take the video and line up the tc with the tc on my timeline that I originally created the timecode video sync track in and wahla! Problem solved...do a little test, it works quite nicely.
Click to expand...
if you only have 5-6 seconds of pre-roll how do you have time to setup your shots and tape the screen...i'm lost on this part.
 
All good sugestions

one more... make sure your clapboard has a solid snap when closed. - meaning no light inbetween the two pieces of wood. Use that clapboard and record audio on a chanel of the DV tape. THis way you can use the audio to sync as well if you need to.

And you can allways eye-ball it.

Even the bigest bugets do that
 
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