Chili
Site Moderator
A few months ago, someone asked me how I made my video, so I sent him a PM describing what I did. Here's most of it....
When I shoot video, I use a CD player or car stereo sitting near the camera so the camera mic can pick it up. It also helps if you can hear the song, too. That was a problem when I did the Walk With Me video (see my link below), sometimes I couldn't hear the song very good and I didn't keep good time with lip syncing.
I use Sony Vegas HD and I highly recommend it for editing video. It does AVCHD natively and you don't have to do any special conversions. AVCHD is common on the new consumer grade HD cameras. They say you need a high performance computer to edit with AVCHD, but I have a dual core intel cpu and 4 gigs of ram and it has no problem at all. I have used Adobe Premiere Elements and Pinnacle Studio in the past. The Adobe stuff was good, but it didn't support AVCHD when I bought my camera, not sure if it does now. The Pinnacle stuff was a joke. Sony Vegas feels like pro-level software for not a lot of money. If you know how to use DAW software, you'll have no problem adapting to video editing. Same philosophy, different keystrokes.
When shooting, do multiple takes from different angles and zooms. That will give you more choices when you are back at your studio editing the footage. For lip syncing, it's actually quite easy. Because with a music video, you are always switching around from one clip to another, you don't have to worry about sync drifting which it might do if you let it run long enough. In the video editor, you'll have an audio track from the camera mic that will import when you load in your video clip. You'll also have audio tracks for music or sound effects, etc. and if you don't, you just add one like you would in a DAW. I keep the music track as the time reference and nudge around the video tracks to align with it (the camera’s audio track will move with the video track, they are grouped together). I will usually keep the camera audio track muted unless I'm aligning, then I'll unmute and listen to how close it is with the music track. Transients in the waveforms help to align the tracks.
The first place to start is to come up with the idea for the video. Listen to your song and brainstorm your ideas. I used a lyric sheet and put my ideas in the margins. It worked pretty good and I never used cue sheets or storyboards. Picture what you want for each line or section of the song. A 5 minute video is fairly easy to keep track of all the different scenes or shots. Especially if you're repeating the same scene like for the chorus.
Then go out and shoot your video. Pay attention to natural lighting, especially outdoors. We purposely did some of ours at sunset to get that beautiful golden glow. When I shoot, I just do it in chronological order. I think my video was pretty straightforward with no tricks or anything, so it worked well to just shoot straight through like that. I had a good idea of what I wanted before shooting, but when we got on site, I saw opportunities for other things and changed it up a little. Pay attention to framing and composition, not everything has to be centered. White Strat made some nice suggestions on my Walk With Me video, something about mid distance shots and framing them. It's in the MP3 clinic somewhere.
Instead of cue sheets, I just narrated the shot right on the video so I could listen when back at the studio. I mean, I would start the camera, describe what we would be shooting, do the scene and then say if it was a good take or not, then stop the camera. I'm not a very organized person and this method was easy.
You'll be amazed at how much video you'll shoot for a frikkin' 5 minute song.
When switching between clips, always use a cross fade, unless you really want a staccato look. In Vegas, you'll have to pay attention to the ripple effect when moving around video clips. There are options on how it behaves and you need to learn about that.
In Walk With Me, you'll notice sometimes I'm not lip syncing very good. While my wife and I were doing the scene, the kids were running around and playing, sometimes near the camera. You'll see us looking away from each other... ha ha ha, we kept yelling at them to get away from the camera. We were totally distracted but got it done.
When I shoot video, I use a CD player or car stereo sitting near the camera so the camera mic can pick it up. It also helps if you can hear the song, too. That was a problem when I did the Walk With Me video (see my link below), sometimes I couldn't hear the song very good and I didn't keep good time with lip syncing.
I use Sony Vegas HD and I highly recommend it for editing video. It does AVCHD natively and you don't have to do any special conversions. AVCHD is common on the new consumer grade HD cameras. They say you need a high performance computer to edit with AVCHD, but I have a dual core intel cpu and 4 gigs of ram and it has no problem at all. I have used Adobe Premiere Elements and Pinnacle Studio in the past. The Adobe stuff was good, but it didn't support AVCHD when I bought my camera, not sure if it does now. The Pinnacle stuff was a joke. Sony Vegas feels like pro-level software for not a lot of money. If you know how to use DAW software, you'll have no problem adapting to video editing. Same philosophy, different keystrokes.
When shooting, do multiple takes from different angles and zooms. That will give you more choices when you are back at your studio editing the footage. For lip syncing, it's actually quite easy. Because with a music video, you are always switching around from one clip to another, you don't have to worry about sync drifting which it might do if you let it run long enough. In the video editor, you'll have an audio track from the camera mic that will import when you load in your video clip. You'll also have audio tracks for music or sound effects, etc. and if you don't, you just add one like you would in a DAW. I keep the music track as the time reference and nudge around the video tracks to align with it (the camera’s audio track will move with the video track, they are grouped together). I will usually keep the camera audio track muted unless I'm aligning, then I'll unmute and listen to how close it is with the music track. Transients in the waveforms help to align the tracks.
The first place to start is to come up with the idea for the video. Listen to your song and brainstorm your ideas. I used a lyric sheet and put my ideas in the margins. It worked pretty good and I never used cue sheets or storyboards. Picture what you want for each line or section of the song. A 5 minute video is fairly easy to keep track of all the different scenes or shots. Especially if you're repeating the same scene like for the chorus.
Then go out and shoot your video. Pay attention to natural lighting, especially outdoors. We purposely did some of ours at sunset to get that beautiful golden glow. When I shoot, I just do it in chronological order. I think my video was pretty straightforward with no tricks or anything, so it worked well to just shoot straight through like that. I had a good idea of what I wanted before shooting, but when we got on site, I saw opportunities for other things and changed it up a little. Pay attention to framing and composition, not everything has to be centered. White Strat made some nice suggestions on my Walk With Me video, something about mid distance shots and framing them. It's in the MP3 clinic somewhere.
Instead of cue sheets, I just narrated the shot right on the video so I could listen when back at the studio. I mean, I would start the camera, describe what we would be shooting, do the scene and then say if it was a good take or not, then stop the camera. I'm not a very organized person and this method was easy.
You'll be amazed at how much video you'll shoot for a frikkin' 5 minute song.
When switching between clips, always use a cross fade, unless you really want a staccato look. In Vegas, you'll have to pay attention to the ripple effect when moving around video clips. There are options on how it behaves and you need to learn about that.
In Walk With Me, you'll notice sometimes I'm not lip syncing very good. While my wife and I were doing the scene, the kids were running around and playing, sometimes near the camera. You'll see us looking away from each other... ha ha ha, we kept yelling at them to get away from the camera. We were totally distracted but got it done.
