A Lesson in Patience and Sound
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This is the final edit of the video used for my column
I got a lesson in patience these last few weeks while putting together the latest video for my Common Chords column.
The subject was Washington, D.C. native and now Myrtle Beach resident Phil Swaby, who is the featured fiddle player at the Myrtle Beach landmark bar The Bowery.
Phil is a black man and works in a bar flowing in the traditions of the Confederate flag and the icons of the old South.
He’s pretty laid back about the place and once folks hear him play they forget about his color and focus more on his performance.
My patience involved the editing of the video.
For this column I built two complete song videos:
One video is of Phil playing a classical violin piece filmed at his tiny one-room apartment along the ocean. I used two cameras on tripods, getting footage both tight and wide, and using the camera with the long lens to get detail shots. I synched these both together in Final cut and dropped in better audio recorded simultaneously using an Edirol R-09 digital recorder. This was a chore in patience getting all three sections of the timeline to synch together.
I learned by doing my last Common Chords not to stop the B-roll camera when I’m shooting a song. If I change the shot and get footage of the change that’s okay, I can always cut it out later and save time in synching multiple B-roll cuts on the timeline.
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This is the video of Swaby playing the Mozart piece at his apartment
The second video I made was at the club using my digital recorder to record the band. The audio the cameras recorded was not usable and blown out. Just before the song I wanted to film started, I hit the record button on all three devices. (Two Canon 5Ds and the digital recorder). I did get some help from a student that happened to be at the show catching the band.
For the main video at the top of this post, I used footage from both the music videos I made and then added the interview footage of the musician.
It was a challenge to decide when to make the break between the two videos but I thought the band footage was more interesting and gave the viewer a chance to see something unexpected.
The synching and editing process on the band video took about two days working between assignments and also on a sick day from work.
Dropping in the interviews for the main video took another day and made me take stock in the length. My original edit was 6 minutes so I then cut close to two minutes out.
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This is the video of Swaby and The Bounty Hunters show at The Bowery
If anyone reading knows of a better way to synch video and/or audio from two sources in Final Cut please let me know.
Go to my Common Chords blog to read my story and see how the presentation looks in it’s final form.
Be forewarned, there will be ads before each video on The Sun News site.
rlh
