Sing Your Best. Look Your Best.

To record audio alone or to record audio and video together?  That is, the question.

Many of our clients are superstars who are eager to film short music videos to their professionally recorded audio.  We love and fully support this!  Most clients think, “Why not record audio and film at the same time?  The room acoustics sound just right!  The theatre I could film in means so much to me---it can’t be that difficult for an audio/video engineer to record it all?”

Unfortunately, nothing can be further from the truth.  Recording professional audio and filming professional video requires more than the push of a button or two.  Let’s talk about recording professional audio.  A professional product in the form of audio requires the following phases: recording, editing, and mixing and mastering for distribution to include every online platform.  Let’s talk about recording professional audio while capturing video.  A professional product in the form of intertwined audio and video require the following phases: recording and capturing audio and video at the same time (they cannot be separated), editing for video (editing audio is limited now to not include post-production vocal editing), mixing and mastering the audio (room acoustics cannot be separated from the recording), and video editing (limited jumping between takes as the visual may not line up with the audio).  In other words, either make it happen in one take or sing it/act it the same way every single take!

Let’s bullet point the stressors of having to do both at once:

• At least 2 professional audio/video engineers must be present.  One to capture and troubleshoot audio and the other to be fully present while filming.

• The performer must accurately sing and express themselves in a way that is final.  That means that how the performer sings live is how the video will look.  That a lot of pressure!  You have no room for error.

• One type of visual, the performer under studio headphones, is the only choice to have clean audio.

• Other considerations include lighting setup and adjustments, technical difficulties and most important of all, performer fatigue!

Let’s bullet point the stress-relievers of capturing audio and video separately:

• Recording audio becomes only about how the performer sounds.  The best takes can be compiled together to create “the take”.  If a wrong note is sung or if a word is held out too long, no problem---fixed!  Want to record 20 takes?  The budget can always accommodate this!

• Capturing video becomes about the visual performance.  Certain types of singing do not look particularly flattering on camera.  The best visual take is all that matters because the best audio take has already been captured.

• Multiple wardrobe changes and makeup touches in between takes are all possible with ease because the performer does not have to focus on singing live.

• Post-video production choices are now unlimited because the need to sing into a microphone is no longer required.  Any scene can be created and manipulated to serve the visual product.

  
  

In closing, record audio and video separately.  Your music video will look and sound better than just using the video camera microphone while filming.  The vision of the music video is now a reality and that’s what it’s all about.  Caveat: A live performance sound is possible while recording audio and video at the same time.  Stay tuned for the next blog post…