A simple music video created for my friend's band.
MEDIA: MiniDV | DATE: 5-25-2005
Directed by - Cory Cooke
Edited By - Christopher Coe
Starring - Brought Down Running (Jeff, Cory, Paul, David and Dive)
Guest Starring - Kaylin and Jessie
Storyline: Although the video doesn't really follow any specific timeline, it does show the lead singer distraught over some girl's love.
The band, Bus Driver Roy (later known as Brought Down Running), met up at a local recording studio practice hall to film a simple music video. The idea was to film a few quick scenes of the band, edit it that night, and enter it into an online video contest. The bad lighting, mismatched audio, and low charged batteries proved that this video was gonna take some time to complete.
Pictures from this event are HERE.
SCREEN CAPTURES
BEHIND THE SCENES
We used 2 video cameras, both recording on MiniDV. The song was playing via a CD through the stereo system. After a couple of takes were recorded with a .5 wide angle lens, close-ups of each band member was taken. In order to capture the scenes that took place outside on the roof, we had to use one of the video cameras as a playback device. To do this, we had to stand by the stereo system and record the song on to DV tape.
POST PRODUCTION
I used Adobe Premiere 6.5 with DV settings to edit this video. I believe some 30 clips were captured. About 15 were simple band members singing to the music. The others were individual moments to be used as fillers, if needed.
The normal easy way to edit a music video, is to lay each full take of the band's performance on the timeline, line each one up with the CD Audio track, cut those full takes into parts, delete here and there, while still leaving the scenes you want at the right moment alone. Unknown at the time, the audio CD used on the day of recording didn't match up with the footage captured on MiniDV.
To remedy this, I had to take all of the shots that I wanted to use and move then forward or backwards, sometimes only a fraction of a second, to line up everyone's mouth to the beat.
A few months later, the first official edit was complete. Once viewed by the band, and changes to be made were noted, I went ahead and completed the final edit. This completed the music video itself, except for the entire Look of the piece.
I rendered the video with a few basic effects in order to gain an idea on what the band wanted. After some 27 renders and 2 steadying-program tests, we got what we were after.
Color Correction:
1. I rendered the final edit in native DV with a dimension of 4:3 (720x480) with the NTSC standard of 30fps.
2. I then rendered the video again within Adobe After Effects 6 using the Super 16mm Letterbox as a buffer (it's not as cropped as the 16x9), but this time, I moved portions of the video up or down to prevent anything from getting cut off. I rendered that in native DV 4:3 (720x480) still at 30fps.
3. I imported the video with the Super 16mm letterboxing into Sony Vegas 6.0. This is where I added all of the final Visual Effects that are in the video. The original idea was to make the walls completely white, while keeping the band in color. That didn't work because Adobe After Effects picked up the yellow from the walls, which also took away the features of everyone's face. So I decided to go with a film Bleach Bypass look.
Bleach Bypass is generally a processing technique known when developing movie film incorrectly, and causes a grainy black and white image with mild color tones.
To mimic that, I did some research on the net, and this is the formula I used:
11% white glow
color correction to remove most color (similar to black and white, but lets most reds come thru)
added 6% monochromatic noise
adjusted brightness/contrast
another black and white filter at 50% transparency
I then added a true 16x9 Widescreen TV Letterbox since I knew it will also be up-converted to High Definition in the future.
4. To finalize the piece, I rendered only in Widescreen using native DV 4:3 (720x480 Widescreen) again at NTSC 30fps, but this time with progressive, non-interlaced fields.
MISC
1. For a while, the band was called Bus Driver Roy:
2. With a band name-change, they updated their album cover art:
3. A full DVD of Live Shows was planned:
4. Alternate album cover art:
5. More alternate album cover art:
