POPTHING (DEMO)

B

Ben

Member
Hi there,

ok, after months of complaining about other peoples work...now let me take the ****:

http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/...tefn=RootSite.xml&aff=consumer&cty=US&lang=en

!! PLEASE SELECT "POPTHINGWEB.MOV" !!


POPTHING is work in progress, and part of a pilot for a new music-show for the local german television. It's not trying to copy mtv-Style but rather to get back to the way music was seen in the seventies and take advantage of the filmish look of the dvx. Another thing of the concept is to avoid a moderator and, if possible even overvoicing. So the basic principle for now is that the bands or artists themselves do this transiton: Every Band was asked about the next band we were filming.The featured artists are Mike Skinner (The Streets), The Zutons and the wonderful Shins from Portland.

Comments very very welcome.

Cheers,
Bendrik
 
 
Re: POPTHING (DEMO)

overall really good. really weird music, but one persons trash is anothers treasure like everything but i like the way you did it. Gave me ideas and inspiration for some of my work. Good work and good luck with everything!
 
Re: POPTHING (DEMO)

Loved it.

I'm a tad biased, The Shins are f%$#ing awesome, and The Streets have gotten a heavy rotation as of late as well. This is one of few things that I would actually like to watch, not just as an academic exercise b/c it was filmed on DVX.

As far as the style of the whole thing (anti-MTV as you put it) I definitely dug it. The transitions with the bands mentioning the other bands were entertaining. I wish the sound quality of the live performances were better; get a feed off the clubs' board and that would be the biggest improvement I think you could make in the video.

The lack of a host is nice in a lot of ways, letting the bands and their music speak for themselves. It definitely feels more like watching some old documentary about a band than a modern MTV-style thing wheere the interviewer (Carson D.) is just as much of a celebrity as the musicians. It does, however, have it's drawbacks as well. The guy from The Streets isn't exactly a consumate public speaker. Having a host tends to help smooth over a bit the band members that maybe weren't themselves born to be hosts. It also felt like it lacked 'context', e.g., the bit where they say "such-and-such band was on tour in such-and-such place after release the album this-and-that and we managed to talk to so-and-so after the show". It feels like the segments are kinda floating in outerspace: You show some band member, he says whatever random bit of information is on his mind, and a bit of a live performance, and some more random info... and then it's off to another band.

Umm... I'm not sure I'm making any sense at all, so I'll stop there. Overall I am totally into it. My only problems being the live sound issue, and my vague, rather unhelpful comment about 'context' or 'outer-space' which maybe another day I'll manage to be more articulate about.
 
Re: POPTHING (DEMO)

This looks REALLY good. compelling.

If I could make one suggestion regarding the Shins clip. If you run into this again, I would not to take a feed off the board. You probably know that board feeds in clubs that size are NOTORIOUSLY unflattering to the bands. Often times a feed off the board is only a clone of what's coming through the mains which is only what is needed for the room and not a very well-balanced mix of all instruments (few guitars, out-of-phase cymbals). In that room I can tell that your board feed would contain a LOT of vocals, bass drum, bass guitar and not a very good mix of all of them. The live engineer is doing what he needs for the room, not what would sound good coming out of a TV set or a stereo when the band isn't in your face.

I would suggest getting a split off of each individual channel (each instrument separately) to your own mixer and bring the two channel mix from that into your DVX.

OR, ideally sync video using SMTP to a multi-tracked audio recording which you can then mix down in post.

Neither of these are the cheap or easy way to do it, but your concept and video warrant a better sound than what the typical small-venue board or the DVX can offer.

After all if you're going for the non-MTV approach then the first step is concentrating on the MUSIC.
:D
 
Re: POPTHING (DEMO)

Hey guys!

Thanks for your constructive criticism.

hemophilia:

I really know what you mean with "the segments are floating out of space". This really is a problem with the actual version. Normally you would have a narrator who puts the ends together by just adding one or two transitional sentences to lead you to whatever the musician will say and this way put the message into context. I maybe have to fall back on that to get a continous structure if I don't find something else to get me trough.

Gossamer:

You're right. Sound is still a problem. Lately I had good results by mixing the channels: I take the clean, and rather flat sound sound from the board on one input and mix it with the built-in-mic and mix them both down in post, adding some "live-atmosphere" from the built-in.


Thanks again for sharing your views with me, it helps a lot to find new perspectives to what I'm doing. Keep it coming!

Ben
 
Re: POPTHING (DEMO)

Ben- You just mirrored my thoughts exactly on the sound thing.

As Gossamer pointed out-- sound in small clubs rarely comes close to being a listenable mix in and of itself. And yes, in an ideal world you would patch a multitrack recorder off their board and do a mixdown after the fact. But being realistic, the opportunity to do that is most than likely not there-- expense of a multitrack; the headache it would give the club to have so random guy patching a whole snake off their board; the added time of having to go back over the shows and mix down stuff and then sync audio and video etc etc...

What I would do is just what you said. Try to get at least a mono feed off the board. Record that on one track, and the other track feed a good mic in the room. Just some basic mic that can take some SPL without overloading. Then in post you just try to find the best blend between the signals... maybe shifting the room mic a few milliseconds forward to be more phase coherent with what's coming off the board.

It'll be a far cry from an nice mixdown, but it's not too cumbersome and it could be a big step up from just straight room sound.

Say 'hi' to The Shins for me. "overall really good. really weird music, but one persons trash is anothers treasure" said skettalee. :)
 
Re: POPTHING (DEMO)

Hemophilia,

i wish I had you joining the crew! ;)

it's true, the idea with the multitrack would get much better results
but like you pointed out one would spend more time syncing/mixing stuff than you would actually need for filming/editing.Plus you would need an extra crew member at the concert who deals with all the input plus you would need remote units to keep the camera flexible to move in the room. After all, i think with some tweaking the split-channel-set-up will work out just fine.

Beulah are up next! and quess what...The Shins said they like them alot.
:)
 
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