A poorman's plea...

[Generic Skinhead]

Hey. How are ya. I see.

Right, I'm doing up a production package* for a music video.

Now, while the rest of the class root through their "white stripes" cds, I've decided to do a scene from a musical that hasn't been filmed yet. I'm even gonna try and write the song myself. It has to be 3 mins.

I get a choice of film, beta or DV to shoot it on. My question is about syncing up afterwards. Anyone any expeirience in that area? Basically im taking the **** , trying to rediscover the "fun" of filmaking, but it would be nice if the actors lip movements sorta matched the words. Any advice?

I'm thinking of dv as format cos then I've got loads to shoot on. Film, ill just get one roll of 16.

THinking of recording the song onto minidisk or something. Again any comments on this method would be welcome.

Thanks in advance.

*bullsh1t college term for paperwork-storyboards, shotlists locations etc.

[the big lebowski]

Hey,
We shot a punk band in a club for our last film (STILL in postproduction!) We just played a song from their CD through the club P.A. and shot it 4 or 5 times from different angles (on a DSR200 DVCAM). Then we put the track on Premiere and visually synced up the video tracks individually (it takes a little time!) and cut between them. It ended up looking great!

Cheers

The Dude

[machead]

A friend of mine just used an old tape deck to prompt his artist to shoot his pop vid. Unfortunately when he edited it, you could sync the start of a sequence perfetly but after about 5 seconds it had drifted.. Use fresh *******ies, thats my advice.

If your editing with FCP I can give you some advice in syncing that really makes it very easy.

[machead]

Use fresh bat_ter_ies. incase your wondering

[Generic Skinhead]

At the mo I'm frantically trying to remember a music vid I worked on 3 years ago. It was shot on dv in a derelict house. We had the cd goin on the stereo and the singer singin along.

We cut on FCP and as I recall 90 percent of it was in sync and the rest was hard to notice. But that was ages ago. [img]eek.gif[/img]

Machead how did your friend's vid turn out, or did you see it?

[deanl]

Hey there.

Record your song and burn onto a cd. Make sure you leave plenty of lead in maybe just 20 seconds of click track. Make sure ALL the actors know the song word by word. Make sure everyone had plenty of practice.

Now if you are shooting on dv it should be simple. When your on set hit record on your camera then hit play on your cd. Say action, AND GO. Record them miming the entire song from as many different angles as possible. Doing the same thing at the start each time.

When your in post, take the same cd capture exact track. Or use the exact track you used to burn it (including the lead it/20 seconds of click) and put it on the time line. Now capture ALL your footage. With each new FULL take. Expand all audio tracks so you can see the WAVE forms and match up click track on the cd with the click track recorded on your dv tape. Zoom in and get it as perfectas as poss. Play it. It all should sync up fine. Double check and let it play all the way through. If its all good. Delete the dv audio track and lock the cd audio to the vidio track. You know have images and audio in perfect sync.

Something else you could try out.

When you are recording your track and are ready to burn it to cd. Render and burn a track at say 60% faster than the original. So you have a chipmunks style recording. Add the same click track from recording sync later.

Now get your actors to learn the song at that high speed. They will feel stupid, but it will be worth it on set. When they have it down perfect. Start shooting scenes like that. Then in your editing software. Slow down the video track by 60% and sync up the ORIGINAL recording (it will be harder to sync but worth the effort)

When you play back you will have your actors moving/dancing/singing in slow motion. But their lips will be in sync with the track at normal speed.

Another tip. If your going to do that slow motion "trick" make sure it's worth the effort. Dont have your "singer" standing alone infront of a wall. It will be boring and he will be the only thing moving slow. Make sure there is a nice lively background with HUNDREDS of people jumping around dancing. Well..... erm... Or what ever you have. Just make it intresting.

Remember the slwo motion trick works both ways. HAvae then sing along to a sllloooooooowed down version and movie slowly to. Then when you speed it up, the actor will be singing and moving in at normal speed and in sync. Everyone else who would have acted out the scene at "normal" speed will be speeding around while you actor in the main shot will be quite normal.

You should go and shoot tests at normal speed and slow/fast motion before you get on set.
I hope some of that makes sense. Im not too sure it did.

Despin out.

[sn-films]

The big reality TV show networks like MTV, have some slick SMPTE time coding devices, so synching up is easy to do. Some of us don't have that luxury, so here's 2 cents that helped me out last time I had to do a video.

As Despin indicated above, put the song onto a CD and have the band lip synch. However, add an audible "click" a few seconds before the song starts. Make sure to get that click on each take that you shoot.

Here's the slick part... when you capture the DV footage, capture each take as a seperate file starting IMMEDIATELY after the little click that you added. This made post a lot easier for me. If I knew I wanted to cut to the bass player for a quick shot at 3:07.15, I'd go to the take of the bass player, crop to 3:07.15, and I'm only a frame or 2 off from being synched. It made things go a lot quicker.

Anyway, that's just something to consider. Good luck!

[miker]

basically avoid devices prone to wow and flutter, such as cassette decks, for playback on-set. everything else -- minidisc, dat, even a vhs deck -- will be okay and won't lose sync.

anything with a sync pulse won't drift.

i've used a nicam vhs deck for playback on-set in the past and the results were perfect.

i'm baffled that you're not getting taught this stuff even at an elementary level? are they hoping you already know, or hope you screw up or something?

[machead]

The music video hasn't been completed yet it was shot in 2 locations and some chroma keying in the studio. Last time i saw a clip it involved a lot of jump cuts of short clips from location A to location B to studio, etc.