Video Editing/Producing Help Plaese

vinylstalker

Sup fools.My girlfriend is a professional poet/performance poet (nodefjam)of many years. She teaches poetry to gradeschoolers for a living,but is a real-deal poet and performer as well.For the past year, I have been trying to get her to film some performances,and post 'em up on YouTube. She really is an amazing performer, and islooking to book some coffeshop tours or somesuch in the future. I keep tellingher she needs a solid YouTube presence, free advertising,networking etc..Anyway, I've finally got her interested.Problem is, of course, that neither her nor I know anything aboutvideo transfering, making .avi files, etc.She has a video camera.She has a broadband connection.What else?I'm actually hoping that one of you video-knowledgable cats can hip meto a forum for this sort of thing? We have lots of questions,so I figured a forum or newsgroup would be better than botheringeverybody on a rekkerd-nerd forum such as this.Much Appreciated.-VS

dreskieboogie

First of all make sure the sound on the footage is decent by either getting a line/out from the mixer or put on a wireless mic on her and mix that stuff in the editing with the cameramic to get the some of the atmosphere of the venue.

And put the camera on a tripod.

If it needs editing then download one of those 30 day for free programs from Avid, Final Cut, Pinnacle Liquid etc. Compress it via another freeprogram. I have used streamclip which I believe somebody here recommended me.

I have never tried to upload anything to youtube and it cant be that difficult. Im sure the have guidelines somewhere on their site.

Hope this help.

Good luck,

Dress

vinylstalker

Thanks for the input.
As for sound, she is currently recording some performances
in a local studio. We are thinking mixed performance with
some sort of visual montage, text or whatever else.
The mastered studio track would be the audio.

Anybody had more luck with one freeware editor than another?
I have looked a bit today and there are a shitload.

spelunk

If you have a Mac, use iMovie, unless you're really trying to do some professional editing and color work.

Premiere has a terrible user interface. Final Cut Pro is dope as hell, but has a steep learning curve. I've never used Avid, but my brother, who does this stuff for a living, has told me it's equally powerful but less intuitive than Final Cut.

IMO a visual montage only really works if it's very well executed, and all video-based (i.e. no stills, cause it ends up just looking like Ken Burns). Harder to execute than you'd think. If you shoot the performance well I'd rather just watch her speak. Just my 2cents.

vinylstalker

Thanks.
Im on a PC.
I hear you about the visual montage.
The problem is that the audio is a studio take, so matching
it up to a video performance would be a bit stiff, as it will
not be the same performance. Maybe it will work, just have to experiment.

Nobody knows of any forums then?

SPlDEY

I've helped a few friends do a couple of spoken word videos for youtube. One was overwhelmingly popular and for some reason or other got taken down. I hope I can get a chance to do another one. I definitely have in my mind an incredible way to film one now.

What we found help was recording and mixing on the fly. I used a small USB mixer with 2 Shure SM57's in a quiet room with wood floors and tall ceilings that have alot of natural reverb (Library, Empty school gym). I mixed that with Sony Soundforge, and Edited 2 takes of the same performance with Vegas. Took about 4 days of work, and a couple hours to upload to youtube. Don't know much more then that, but if you have questions you can PM me.

some tips from me:

Recording anything makes it dead, you'd be surprised how sterile anything can look with a fixed camera on a tripod pointed at it. The argument against that is the content determines how dynamic the clip is. Well I for one don't like watching a fixed camera performance on any webcam for any long amount of time. If you're going to at all take it serious then put some thought into the direction of the piece. Be creative with it, get like a 4 wheeled movers cart to move your tripod around.)



I personally haven't seen many Visual montages done correctly. (Images correlating with words/metaphors) So, unless you're really good at the editing process. Avoid that.

Good luck,

- spidey

vinylstalker

Hey, thanks for the thoughtful response.

I appreciate the idea of moving the camera around on the cart.
The video performance will be from a small club, so dunno how
practical it would be. I was thinking more of taking multiple
takes from dif. angles from multiple performances.

A large part of the GF's poems are for multiple voices.
Different lines are coming from different perspectives on
a common subject. Live, they are performed with actors.
In the studio, she has been experimenting with overdubs of her
own voice, and actors reading her lines as well.
This leads to alot of possibilities for experimenting with
the video too.

I appreciate the comments about not getting over my head, though.
The montage idea seems trickier the more I ponder it.

I will def. PM when I start to come up with something.
I (we) would love the feedback.

Egbert_Souse

Yeah, I want a free simple windows program too. nothing fancy, just basic shit. and also I would want something where it would be easy to insert myself into a cartoon.

vinylstalker

Right.
What is the easy to use simple one out of the hundreds?