Hi everyone,

I just finished editing what I think is the final version of a promotional video for a band called Bmmchk. Not really a band but a techno computer musician who performs live in the sometimes company of other live instruments and live performance art like spinning.

Long story short the artist wanted a documentary style approach to the video but I had issues with that.....

The entire show was shot with a single camera. Non-existant B roll material during that performance and no B roll from the night in particular that fit with that particular act. Finally the musical pieces themselves run roughly 10 minutes each and have little in the way of difinitive starts and endings.

So I did away with the idea of a documentary and made it into a flashier edited promotional clip which appears as a exerpt from the performance. I've edited down the music to a shorter 4 minute length with intended cut points to add flow to the video. The beginning is the graphical opening splash meant to draw the eye, provide a montage overview and then meld into the short livesque style performance.


What I need help with is opinions and critique on how the piece works on individual levels and as a greater whole. Are the graphics and effects good or are they cheese? Does the piece convey it's intended purpose which is to highlight the performance and use as a promotional video? Does the video quality look professional?

This was shot with a XHA1/WD-H72 on a Glidecam 4000/Smooth Shooter rig. Light for the performance came almost entirely from a consumer video projector displaying psychedelic light effects. Edited in Vegas Pro 8 with several Magic Bullet 1.1 effects and tweaks and many composited tracks.

I want to ask the DVinfo community to give me as much feedback as possible so that have some confidence that I could take this back to the client (btw this was a non-paying gig).

Many thanks in advance.

http://www.vimeo.com/1392224

James Hooey

I think you have done more than enough for a non paying job (why is it non paying, are they friends?). If you are worried about all the other ways that you could have approached the job and wether or not you chose the right one then don't baecause at the end of the day the one you chose is the only one that matters and personnally id be happy with what you did.

The thing that was missing the most in this video was a crowd dancing with glow sticks and what not, I think a lot of fast cuts between a crowd and the band would have helped a lot cause lets face it you weren't dealing with the most animated band iv ever seen......mind you the keyboard player did nod once or twice!.

You can take it to the band with no worries especially if you aint gettin paid.

Andy.

Looks like you did an awesome job to me.

video is super, awesome work, but the audio, I would never use live sound for the video like this one,
would use clean audio ,and if you really want to get that ambient, get the second track with just the crowd audio,
but that's just me :)

Andy, thanks for the response. The reason it was free was really a trade of services. He did some modelling work for stock footage for me, I shot and edited a performance for him.

I agree completely about crowd shots. I wish I had some. Actually there was no dancing crowd. Honestly all I remember seeing was people sitting or walking to the bar. (Mabey people were worried about getting smacked with the spinners. :)

Thanks for the vote of confidence in the finished edit. I want to mention some of your points to the artist.



Craig - thanks, I appreciate it.



Bubba - The artist had a choice and he was hooked on using the original live recording which was simply with a Olympus digital voice recorder and a Sony ECM-ZS90 stereo mike facing front of house. I offered to edit to one of the artists mixes to the footage.

Thanks for the thumbs up on the video.



I really appreciate the comments from everyone, I will be sending the link to the artist today (if he doesn't already know it's online) so it will be great to hear his opinion of it. I'll post again when I get his feedback for interests sake.

James

Well here's the scoop on how the client liked it.....He was really impressed and had nothing but positive comments. I talked with him about how I took an approach that did not necessarily become a documentary style. He thought it worked really well and gave a good glimpse at the performance and his art. He liked the effects, titles and promotional style (which was a major concern for me considering he was very against the initial suggestion of such things).

Finally he offered to do more modelling work for stock footage to offset the time I spent editing together the promo clip.

So he's happy, I'm happy and I appreciate everyones comments.

All the best,

James