Music Video – syncing audio to overcranked video

[Pato Kei]

Hi Jonathan

Thanks for your answer. Yes, I want to use this method just in a few shots. Why do you say that shooting at 60fps is easier than 50? Shooting at 60 would require to increase the speed 250 and it sounds too fast 🙁

[Jonathan Ziegler]

Well, the musicians generally know their own work pretty well and will be able to keep up tempo (most musicians who do any type of live music deal with varying beats and tempos all the time, including speeding it way the heck up). We went over this internally before shooting. Finally, we just asked the musicians and they were willing to try it – we had 4 versions in case 2.5x was too much (normal, 1.5, 2x, and 2.5x). Turns out, it worked really well at 2x, shot at 60fps and final at 30. 2x or 2.5x isn’t that fast unless you have music at 200bpm to start with. Even then, just try it – don’t over think it. Maybe even numbers are just easier for our brains? Dunno.

50 doesn’t convert well for the audio down to 24 is all. Maybe if you could shoot at 48fps, but not many cameras do that. Like you said, it would be 2.08 going from 50fps to 24. The music might be dead on, but I’ll bet the musicians’ cues aren’t that dead on at 2.08x normal speed (they have to find a comfortable tempo). It’s asking a lot of precision from a process that isn’t that precise. This is why you don’t do the whole video using the effect: for one, it’s gonna get old fast (a couple clips are artsy, a whole bunch are overkill and will feel gimmicky), for 2, the musicians won’t likely be able to keep it up for a whole take so you shoot what you can and reshoot to pick up only the key stuff. Fill in the rest with various B-Roll or other related ideas. We found most cues got missed after no more than a minute or so at 2x. Even with ones who knew their music really well.

Please post the results. I don’t care if I’m wrong, really. Try it, see what happens. Keep shooting. 🙂

Save early. Save often.

Jonathan Ziegler

http://www.electrictiger.com
520-360-8293