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Editing of our rock video project (Deadly Sight by Nowhere Found) is coming along nicely. This is in great part thanks to Harry Goldhagen and Joe Siegel, who have generously loaned us an HD video editing setup. We’re cutting the video in Vegas, which is new to us, and learning all sorts of new things.
I thought I might post a few of the things I have learned, from an editor’s perspective, in connection with this project. If we ever do one again, we’ll want to remember these things. They might also be useful for anyone else who does a similar project.
These notes apply to our sort of project – a rock video with a crew of about 8 and 4-5 cameras.
- If something happens to screw up continuity (hat falls off, strap breaks, etc.):
The individual should stop playing and fix it, and then continue once it’s fixed. Everything else should continue as if nothing happened. This is not a performance – if you leave it, it screws up the entire take, whereas if you fix it, you only screw up a few seconds of footage.
Musicians will probably need to be specifically instructed on this, as they are used to continuing no matter what while performing.
If the individual doesn’t notice the continuity break, or doesn’t fix it, camera operators should stop shooting that person/angle. Look for something else interesting, because the broken continuity shot won’t be used anyway.
- In the best case scenario, camera operators will know the parts of the song (ie: who does what, when) in advance. This will help prevent surprise “Oh, look, something interesting is happening over there now!” movements.
- If you do a lot of takes of one song, with a lot of cameras, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify how they match up in post. Easy solution: before every take, have the drummer strike his snare before the song begins – he should do it in correspondence with the take count. (Take one: strike snare once. Take two: strike snare twice, etc.) This allows for easy identification of takes and syncing of footage.
Or use a slate. But everyone hates those things.
- Remind camera operators to set their audio levels low. Sound is important for syncing, so audio needs to be captured, but heavily clipped audio is almost worse than zero audio.
