Shooting a live music performance with sound

[Nrk]

Am planning on shooting 2 live music performance videos next month and am trying to suss out a realistic way of syncing the sound. The pieces will be shot in a recording studio environment, 1 of the videos will feature a singer and a french horn quartet and the other will feature a singer playing guitar and singing.

My plan is to do a 2 camera shoot with an additional B-roll of footage of the engineer behind the mixing desk and close-ups of a few pieces of gear in the studio. At points the camera will remain on the singer for periods obviously but I am not sure how long I will be able to get away with 1 continuous shot without having to cut to an alternative angle so that I can sync the visuals back in with the sound.

Is it the case that you can only get a few seconds of synced sound before it starts to drift or is it realistic to think that I could match up the audio and video and stay on 1 shot for 8-10 seconds before having to cut to another shot so that I can make adjustments?

I imagine that I am being overly optimistic but I am determined to shoot the pieces using super 8 one way or another. Maybe I could cut to dancing chickens every other second.

ta'

[Tscan]

I used to do this a lot with 2 Canon 814XLS's. It worked out pretty well. You can hold lip sync for at least 10 seconds. I would add in a video camera that would make it easier to sync shots and audio. I would actually use an HD cam to mix with 2 S8 angles going for many aesthetic cuts ins.

[Nrk]

10 seconds? Nice one, though I was grasping at straws in suggesting 8-10 seconds.

Good call on the video camera to help matters though, to be honest, I think I will stick to super 8 as I will most likely use various types of expired film with the 3rd camera and cut between it and 500t to add some variation.

[Tscan]

Yeah, having a video camera with audio and video reference come in handy when syncing sound. Look for cues like drum symbols when syncing... comes in handy like a slate. You'll find a lot of shots like close ups of instruments, various shots around the stage ect... don't have to be synced right to look right. good luck-

[woods01]

In digital post you can easily adjust for drift and for typical music video cutting 10 seconds is more than enough sync. I'd suggest shooting 24fps and using a digital slate with the timecode synced to your audio playback. Do head and tail slates.

If you can't get get a slate then just record the screen of whatever digital playback device you have so you know where in the song your shot is. Keep judicious notes on all your shots. Or consider rolling a video camera so that you have an audio/visual reference of when you camera's roll. The video cam mic can pic up the sound of the playback and your loud S8 cameras assuming the playback isn't too loud (which might be necessary for drums but those are easy to sync).

Don't go too crazy about sync, if you look at many classic videos and concert films closely you'll notice they often go out of sync. Often because they grabbed shots out of sequence to make it look like they had more coverage than they got.

[dave]

kodachrome k40 sound still available in 200ft or 50 ft carts
cost $25 per 50ft, frozen since manufactured, exp 1996.
e-mail if interested

[Nrk]

Thanks for the advice, it has me feeling quite optimistic about the shoot, will take all that you have said on board.

My only concern now is the sound of 3 super 8 cameras clicking away in the background. I will try to combat this by using long focal lengths (which is preferable anyway as I want shallow depth of field for most shots) and by using unidirectional mics for the live recording.

If anyone has any other advice on keeping things quiet I would appreciate it. I will be using 2 x 1014XLS and a Nizo Pro.

[Will2]

If it is a studio environment everything should be closely mic'd limiting the spill over from the cameras but any ambient mics may have to be processed to notch out the camera noise.

See if they can do a multichannel protools (or equivalent) recording and you can mix it later and fix any camera noise issues.

Sounds like a fun project.

[Nrk]

Aye, that's the plan. The guitar being used is an old epiphone ET270 which is a beast anyway so I seriously doubt the cameras will get a look in. It was more when recording the brass section as I had wanted to use close miking and an ambient mic as well but I reckon I will just go close and used some analog delay and reverb to smooth things out and open up the sound a bit.

I thought maybe people would have dampened the noise of the cameras by wrapping them up or something but maybe that's just stupid.

Should be good craic.

[Ektagraphic]

This sounds like lots of fun! Something I've been wanting to attempt...Best of luck and please share the results!

[Nrk]

thanks, will do. The plan is to shoot in november and have it completed by december, will post up the results along with a list of everything that went wrong and the shorter list of all that went right.