Music Videos: “Behind the Edit”

I know…I know it’s supposed to be “Behind the Music” or “Behind the Scenes”, but I edited this video so this is my “Behind the Edit” blog.  Click here to watch the video.

Last month I was offered the opportunity to edit the official music video for “Nothing Left to Give” by New Jersey based rock band REVERSE ORDER.  It's from the band's latest CD "Made in America" available here on iTunes.  This project was a challenging experience in many ways.  First, I was not involved in the pre-production or production process.  Secondly, I never had any contact with the director.  I was simply handed all of the unedited footage, the song, and a very loose outline by the band’s manager, Cindy Russo.  This non-standard workflow makes the “Nothing Left to Give” music video the perfect subject for a sneak peek at what goes on “Behind the Edit”.  It also offers a unique example of what editors bring to music videos…especially since there was no director involved in the post-production process.

There are numerous aspects of this music video I could talk about, but I'll focus on the three post-production techniques that I feel affected the video the most.  I edited this project in Adobe Premiere CC and I continue to be impressed with its capabilities.  Over the next week or so I will post tutorials on how these effects were accomplished.

First, I want to discuss the overall look of the footage.  Judging by the files I was given, I suspect the video was shot with a DSLR Camera.  If you take a look at the still from the original footage below, you’ll see that it was nicely exposed pleasingly colorful, and very clean.

(A still from the RAW Footage)

However, when I listened to the song and studied the lyrics.  The raw footage didn’t really represent the desperate story that front man John Russo was singing about.  The footage needed to be roughed up to enhance the edgy mood of the song.  I decided to apply a Bleach Bypass filter on all of the scenes.  The easiest way to describe this filter’s effect is to think about comparing the look and feel of brand new blue jeans to acid-washed jeans.  It removes a lot of the color while giving the scenes a harsh, cool, faded look.

(With Bleach Bypass filter) 

One of the things I love about DSLR Camera’s is their ability to produce clean pictures even in low light.  However, I abandoned that clean look by adding grain to the scenes.  I wasn’t trying to convince anyone that this video was shot on film, that’s something I’ve always despised. Video is video and film is film..period!  In this case, the grain made the scenes grungy.  The last thing I did was add some color saturation back into the mid-tones because the Bleach Bypass filter was a bit too extreme.  The grain can be seen on John's black shirt.  The final result is pure rock-n-roll.

(The Final Look with added Grain & Mid-tone Colors boosted)
-Click the picture to see it full screen-

The next thing I focused on was the static group shots of the band.  It’s important for me to note that what follows is not a criticism of the director or production crew.  I wasn’t on the shoot so I have no idea what they were up against in terms of time, logistics, or budget.  Below is a still from one of the group scenes of the band.  It was recorded on a locked down tripod with no camera movement or alternate angles.  Most music videos have shots changing every few seconds, but these shots basically just sat there.  I had very little b-roll of the band to cut to and it really dragged the pacing of the video down to a screeching halt.

(Static Wide Shot)

I noticed that there were lights on stage that were purposely used as part of the set and that gave me an idea.  I used a combination of color correction to increase the intensity of the hot spots and Lense Flare filters to make the lights on set flash to the beat of the music.  Yes, I manually animated each light flash on and off to accentuate the driving beat of Cruise Russo’s drum playing. This added the visual interest the scene lacked on its own...making it perfectly fine to hang on a wide shot and watch the group perform together.

(With Animated Light Flare-FX)

The last challenge I’ll focus on was the one exterior location.  It was shot in an empty parking lot.  Once again, these scenes were recorded as wide shots on a tripod with no alternate angles, close-ups, etc..  There were three takes of the same section of the song all framed wide.  First and foremost, as you can see below, the color of the scene did not match the rest of the video at all.  It was warm and the interiors scenes were cool.

(Exterior Scene from Raw Footage) 

I added the Bleach Bypass filter and grain as described earlier.  I also tinted the scenes blue to match the rest of the video.  The outdoor scene was much brighter when edited into the rest of the video, which was shot on a mostly black stage.  After much experimentation with color correction and filters, I decided on the simple solution of adding a soft black vignette around the scene to darken the edges and keep the viewers attention focused on John.  I also decided to quickly fade in and out of black the first time this scene was used.  These techniques helped these scenes blend better.  Later in the video, once viewers were used to seeing the parking lot scenes, I was able to go back to straight cuts.

(Exterior with, Bleach Bypass, Grain, Blue Tint, and Black Vignette) 

Finally, to combat the boredom of the wide shot that would need to be on screen up to 12-seconds at each occurrence, I started scaling and re-framing the shots as if to make them look like alternate focal lengths.  Since I had 3 takes of the wide shot, I switched to a different take with every cut I made.  This made John’s action slightly different from cut to cut.  It also made the reformatting less obvious and the overall scene more interesting.  The two shots below were both wide shots before I reformatted them.  Notice that I repositioned the vignette to follow John and keep the effect's continuity in tact.

(Above:  Two examples of reformatting the same shot to simulate additional focal lengths)

And there you have it!  Hopefully you’ve enjoyed my first, if not the first, “Behind the Edit” blog of a music video without a director.  I could go on and on about why I used black and white, slow motion speed shifts, and motion stabilizing, but even I’ve had enough!  I hope what you take away from this is the creative impact editors have on music videos and just how much we care about our work.  It’s intricate, technical, and dare I say…artistic all at the same time.  For the most part, editors work in complete anonymity and love every minute of the process anyway.  After all, no one ever says, “Wow…who edited that music video!”  Maybe someday, someone will.

Band Promos on a Rock "N" Roll Budget

I had the pleasure of producing a live performance promo for New Jersey based rock band REVERSE ORDER last month at the Sands Resort in Pennsylvania. These guys have toured the world and were semi-finalists on America’s Got Talent.  Since this band is independent, maximizing their budget was my main concern.  This project is a perfect example of my “One Man Band” production workflow..bad pun at no extra charge.

Here is the link to the full promo on my YouTube Channel (REVERSE ORDER Promo).  The details of my workflow are below.

PRE-PRODUCTION:

Working alone at a concert is a daunting task, but it doesn’t mean that the promo should be limited to boring, static camera angles.  After all this is Rock “N” Roll so everything about it should be heart-pumping.  The key is to define the goal of the promo with the band before the shoot.  In REVERSE ORDER’s case, they wanted to present highlights of several songs throughout the night.  We mutually agreed to focus on 6 songs.  The full night included roughly 30 songs.  This would help me determine my shooting strategy.  Truthfully, the only mistake on my part during pre-production was making sure that the selected songs were not the first songs played that evening.  The first song or two should be used to check audio recording levels and camera exposure. It’s also helpful for the band and I to have a couple of songs to warm up.  In addition, the crowd doesn’t usually gather until the second set and you definitely need crowd shots in a live band promo.

VIDEO PRODUCTION:

My video equipment list was very lean and mean.  I brought my Canon-70D DLSR and a Manfroto Monopod.  Each time one of the six band-designated songs was being played, I shot conservative hand-held coverage.   I started on a wide shot, moved in for close-ups of the lead singer, and panned over to capture the lead guitarist and drummer during solos.  Then at the end of the song it was back out to a wide shot.  Simple enough.  The real trick was that I shot every single song that night…even ones not designated by the band.  This was my opportunity to shoot “cover shots”.  The cover shots included close-ups of band members and their instruments, extreme wide shots showing the crowd, shots on stage behind the band, and crowd group shots without the band.  This is where my monopod came in handy, allowing me to shoot high-angle shots by extending it fully and holding it as high as I could.

(A High-Angle "Cover Shot" using the Monopod)

(A "Cover Shot" of Cruise Russo not playing the drums to one of the six key songs)

The cover shots were added in the edit room to make the shoot look like there were multiple cameras being used.  It was also the key to producing a dynamic promo with pacing that matched the tempo of the songs and the band’s infectious energy...on a very cost-effective budget!

AUDIO PRODUCTION:

Audio is by far the most challenging aspect of shooting a live event alone.  It’s almost completely out of my control and I never know what I’m up against until the moment I arrive at the venue.  A pre-concert sound check was not possible since the club was situated in the middle of the casino.  I brought my Zoom H1 Digital Audio Recorder.  This is the best $100 I’ve ever spent on production gear…period!  My first thought was to connect it to the house audio board to record a clean mix. The house audio operators were very cooperative, but could only feed me a “line” signal via XLR outputs.  Line signals are too strong for the Zoom’s mic input.  I have since solved that problem.  I will blog about it soon.  The venue that night was in the middle of a loud casino with slot machine bells going off non-stop!  It was a challenging environment to say the least.  I made a quick decision to place the Zoom H1 in front of one the band’s downstage audio monitors and let the internal stereo microphones do their job.  This would record a decent representation of the overall audio mix.  If it was good enough for the band, it would be good enough for the promo.  I also recorded the sound with the internal microphone of my DSLR.  Combining these two sources in editing provided a reasonably good live recording of the gig.  Setting the band’s expectations where audio is concerned is definitely important. Even when I do connect directly to someone’s audio board, it doesn’t guarantee success.  The operators are mixing for the live room, not our video.  You always need alternate audio sources as a back-up!

POST-PRODUCTION:

Since this was a highlight promo.  I decided to use the chorus from each song in the final edit.  As most of you know, the chorus is the “hook” of the song that everyone instantly recognizes.  Fortunately, there is always more than one chorus in every rock song and, for the most part, they are identical in both lyric and music structure.  That enabled me to use the best shots from all of the choruses of a single song...to edit together one killer chorus from each of the six songs the band was interested in.  In short, it was like having three separate takes of each song’s chorus.

LESSONS LEARNED:

There’s an old saying that goes something like this, “television production is not about what goes right, it’s about what goes wrong and how you deal with it.”  When you’re working alone, “run & gun” style as I often do, planning is vital.  However, all of the planning in the world won’t completely remove the risk of failure.  You must also rely on your experience and instincts to adjust to changes on the spot.  If you have any suggestions on how I could improve this workflow, your comments would be greatly appreciated.  If you use this workflow on a production, please let me know how you did.

ROCK ON EVERYONE!

The Only Constant Is Change

As I sit at my laptop contemplating the subject of my very first blog, I can't help reflect on my 25+ year career in television production.  The title of this blog sums it up best.  It's a saying we're all too familiar with, especially those of us whose careers have always relied on the latest technology.  A quick Google search revealed that this phrase was actually coined by a Greek philosopher named Heraclitus, who was active around 535 BCE.  You'll find that his wording was slightly different, but the meaning is still the same.  I'm amused by this for two reasons;  first, as a proud Greek American, I now know that the mental process of surviving change is a genuine part of my ancient heritage; and second, it surprises me that this basic "rule of life" was contemplated thousands of years before computers, cell phones, the internet, and all of the amazing technologies we enjoy today.

The first time I experienced change in my career was in the early 1990's.  I had settled into a rewarding and comfortable career as an Online Videotape Editor with virtually unlimited job opportunities.  I was on top of the world as I steered a million dollar edit room to help producers and directors execute their creative vision at a hourly room rate that sometimes skyrocketed upwards of $600 per hour!  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, computer-based non-linear editing took over.  The cost of building an edit room and the resulting hourly rates plummeted to a mere $125 per hour...even less.  Almost overnight, this new technology transferred the traditional post-production power of established edit facility owners to independent producers, editors, and graphic artists.  People who were capable of changing adapted and thrived.  Those who desperately clung to old processes simply went out of business or left the industry.  Right now I see a similar change transpiring with video camera technology, but that's a topic for a future blog.

Like a lot of you, I'm in the process of reinventing my career...again!  I like to affectionately call it "Reinvention 2.0".  During my 1990's experience (Reinvention 1.0), I unwittingly stumbled onto the keys to surviving change.  I not only learned computer-based non-linear editing, I eventually taught editing classes in New York City and all over the U.S..  To my fellow editors, it seemed like I was training my competitors...which in some cases was true.  However, every class was also filled with producers and directors I had never met before.  All of them were in fact potential clients and viewed me as a leading expert in new editing technology.  During that period of time, I was never busier!  Teaching classes is also how I gained entrance into the entertainment industry as an editor on the animated television series Courage the Cowardly Dog for the Cartoon Network.  To this day, I'm convinced that had it not been for that drastic change in technology, I would never have had the opportunity to work on that ground-breaking show with such amazingly talented people.  In short, there is an upside to change when you embrace it completely.

My intention with this blog is to share everything I currently know and continue to learn about television production.  In fact, that's Reinvention 2.0's Mantra:  Learn and Share.  Thanks to the internet, I don't need to travel all over the country as I did 20 years ago.  I can learn and share anytime, anywhere...even from my home edit room.  In the future, I promise eye-catching pictures, time-saving links, tutorial videos, product reviews, and samples of my work with detailed analysis of my workflows.  In the wise words of Heraclitus the Greek, "The only constant is change", so let's get to it!