OT: How would you approach sound for this shoot?

smhontz wrote on 12/12/2014, 1:14 PM
I will be doing my first "music" video shoot in a few weeks and was looking for some guidance on how best to approach sound.

The shoot is an edgy spoken word piece with the main talent (Chris) doing the spoken word and being accompanied by a beautiful woman (Courtney) on cello. The style of the video will be along the lines of The Piano Guys, i.e, lots of camera movement, cutting between Chris and Courtney.

I'm struggling to figure out what sound you record live on the day of the shoot, and what you record in the studio, and how you would use both of those in the final edit. Do I record both Chris and Courtney in the studio, and play that back to them during the shoot, and have them try to match it? Or, do I record Chris live at the shoot, and just play the recorded cello to Courtney and have her match to that? Seems like any kind of live recording of Chris would be difficult because I'm sure Courtney's cello would pick up on his mic. So, do I just use his live recording as a scratch track, and then have him record his vocal part after the fact to match up what he did live?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Comments

ddm wrote on 12/12/2014, 1:33 PM
Almost all music videos use a prerecorded track. You would also want to record live sound as you can fly in anything fun or interesting into the video when you edit. It's good to have a count off at the top as well, or some kind of click.
musicvid10 wrote on 12/12/2014, 4:17 PM
Record in the studio.
Play the recording during the shoot.
Sync to the recorded track in post.
Former user wrote on 12/12/2014, 4:34 PM
What musicvid10 said.
rraud wrote on 12/12/2014, 4:49 PM
+1. What musicvid10 said.
ushere wrote on 12/12/2014, 5:47 PM
didn't think there was any other way ;-)

+1 musicvid10
John_Cline wrote on 12/12/2014, 5:49 PM
Some people are really good at lip syncing, some people aren't. If they are very well rehearsed and essentially do it the same way each time, then it won't be that difficult, it's all about "repeatability". One trick when syncing to a recorded track is to slip the audio track back in time a bit in post because most people tend to sync ever-so-slightly late. Just play around with slipping the audio and it will be quite obvious when it's in sync, it will be a subtle difference but can do wonders for making the lip sync convincing.
mountainman wrote on 12/12/2014, 6:23 PM
Ordinarily I would agree with the above solutions, but...

The performance of "the spoken word" may be very difficult to lip sync to. If the performance is something that the performers do repeatedly then lip sync would work. But if this is extemporaneous it would be most difficult to sync up.

This might be better as a live performance. One camera, many takes, using the best bits. Or multi-cam and cut in post.

Tough call. jm
Byron K wrote on 12/13/2014, 3:17 AM
Interesting project.

For best audio quality since this is a music video, as Musicvid suggested, take a good studio recording of the cello.

For the live performance record Chris speaking and have the cello play "very softly or silently" with the previous recorded track so the cello movements are synced with the music during Chris' live speaking and won't be picked up by Chris' mic.

You can also record Chris and Courtney separately using a static cameras and merge the two takes together w/ Chris on one side of the clip and Courtney on the other side. They cant be overlapping in the shot or this won't work and you'll need enough space between them to feather the split screen.

You can also have a roving action camera that pans around and cut to make the video interesting.
farss wrote on 12/13/2014, 4:23 AM
[I]" The performance of "the spoken word" may be very difficult to lip sync to."[/I]

Indeed, try doing ADR. The technical stuff is easy, the performance is another matter entirely and here I'm only talking about a few words.

I have shot something like this, no warning, no prep. I was just there with the camera when the person decided to "do it" and the musician(s) happened to be there. The muso improvised, other picked it up. It was spine chilling stuff. This is where you forget about everything other than capturing the essence of the thing and do your best to be a fly on the wall or you'll destroy the thing. What is in front of the camera is what matters, don't mess with it, you'll just chase the spirits out of the room.

Bob.
dxdy wrote on 12/13/2014, 7:32 AM
Have you considered a pair of wireless mics? Each mic into one channel on a mixer, or just a Y Cable splitter feeding the two mono channels to the stereo jack on your camera.
musicvid10 wrote on 12/13/2014, 9:00 AM
Shoot the studio session, too. Cut in the location stuff. Keep the session audio throughout.
You won't be recording in different field locations and trying to cut them together. It doesn't work. Set the location cameras long.