Music Video Production Workflow

[Matt Irwin]

Hi, first post. I'm glad to see an entire forum dedicated to audio.

Ok...

I was wondering what the procedures/techniques/equipment are for playback sync on a music video shoot? I'm a DP and I haven't really had the time to see how playback is organized.

I know that a timecode slate is often hardwired to the song's timecode and there is a "pop" a few seconds before playback.

Is the song broken down into separate clips according to the shot list? Is there a method for syncing that doesn't involve a timecode slate? What sort of gear is required?

The reason I ask all of this is becasue I have a friend who is a musician and as a favor, I'm shooting a music video for him to use for promotional purposes. I'm working with a skeleton crew using my personal gear and practically no budget. So, as the resident "expert", I have to have all the answers.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer,

[Jeff Wexler]

Hi, first post. I'm glad to see an entire forum dedicated to audio.

Ok...

I was wondering what the procedures/techniques/equipment are for playback sync on a music video shoot? I'm a DP and I haven't really had the time to see how playback is organized.

I know that a timecode slate is often hardwired to the song's timecode and there is a "pop" a few seconds before playback.

Is the song broken down into separate clips according to the shot list? Is there a method for syncing that doesn't involve a timecode slate? What sort of gear is required?

The reason I ask all of this is becasue I have a friend who is a musician and as a favor, I'm shooting a music video for him to use for promotional purposes. I'm working with a skeleton crew using my personal gear and practically no budget. So, as the resident "expert", I have to have all the answers.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer,

You will get many answers here I am sure because there are many, many ways to do a Music Video, some very complex and some very simple. I am going to offer up the absolute simplest way for you to go about this, judging what the requirements may be based on your description. First of all, I don't know idf you are shooting FILM or VIDEO for this "Video" and that will make a difference. If shooting film, the easiest would be have one master playback track assembled, probably by your musician friend, with music program on left channel (or channel 1) and linear timecode (as audio) on the right channel (or channel 2). This could easily be a standard music CD for easy playback on the set. When you go to film certain scenes, pick the section of the music you want on the CD and play it back through some speaker system to the set (output of channel 1) and also the timecode (output of channel 2) to a TC slate or any viewable TC display that you will photograph. This method will work just fine and it is not terribly important what variety of TC has been put down on the CD and outputted to the slate...  you are not making any other original recording on the day and the TC reference photographed off the slate will be sufficient to get editorial back to the section of music you used for that shot.

If you are shooting video, things can be even more simple and involve less equipment. There really is no need for any timecode reference only some suitable music playback to the set (again, this could be a CD, an iPod, whatever) through loudspeakers. The video camera should be fitted with a camera mounted mic and when rolling this mic will record the section of music being played on the set. It is a fairly simple matter then, in editrial, to take this guide track audio and confrom the good music track to that section of picture.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Jeff Wexler

[Matt Irwin]

Ah, I should have been more clear. We're shooting on video (HVX200 in 720p).

Both the film and video advice was very helpful. I guess we'll just use a boombox and point a mic at the speakers. The less hassle, the better.

Thanks Jeff!

[OscarL]

I have done some PB using the methods that Jeff described, but most of the time I feed the TC to one track on the camera or Deva,DAT etc (video or film) and then you could take that audiotrack and use that as a TC track in the AVID (don't know if the function exist in FC) that way you could get all the picture to line up with the music and cut it almost like a live show...

Good Luck!

Oscar Lovnér

Sound Image

[Philip Perkins]

Many years ago we used two Nagra recorders for this--one playing back while self resolving via 60Hz pilotone, the other rerecording the track after recording a slate clap in front of the camera.  Later we went to a single TC Nagra playing back a TC dub of the track that was being being "pulled up" to compensate for the "pulldown" of the film speed in telecine.  Later the Nagra was replaced with a TCDAT playing back a 48k track @ 48.048k, or a non-TC DAT with audio that had been pulled up previously, one track of of audio and the 2nd with LTC for the slate.  Nowadays, for film I play back the track off a laptop while doing the pullup and rerecord the track to an NL recorder with its own TC.  For video I do the same, and send the playback track to the camera audio input.  This method works very well for jobs in which some shots are playback and some are not--all the shots are in the same ascending TC sequence and the playback tracks have syncable audio that is plenty good enough for rough cutting and matching to a master track.  There are other advantages to laptop playback, such as being easily able to do off speed playback @ any rate, edit loops, add count offs, etc..  There is a freeware application that many of us use for this called Audacity.

Philip Perkins