Demo vid for a band
 

I was hired by the band to video their gig last weekend. They want the full show on dvd as well as a demo dvd to send out. Anyone have any ideas on how to edit a band demo and make it look good? Right now only thing I was doing was going to put clips of their show but that seems kind of boring to me. Maybe I could interview the singer he's the one running the band and the one who hired me.

So much depends on what you actually shot - how many cameras? If it was just one camera then your options are limited. Did you move about? If so for a demo then just take the master track of the song - and then cut it with close ups, cutaways, random material from other songs shot from different angles. You can't stay on them very long if they are playing, as musos will spot the edits - but the odd close up of the bass players top half, maybe the keyboard player but not his fingers, the drummers down beats and cymbal hits, can all be made to look 'live'. Demos can be musical, a straight live version of the set, or effect - cut up with other footage of the band you might have. One band wanted this kind of thing and had limited budgets, but we storyboarded it out into a little tale. The four members of the band all shot in a city area, wearing their usual clothes, then a bit like the bat signal, they all looked up, got a kind of colour laser to their eyes, then we did simple camera tricks to make them change into the gig gear, by walking past vertical objects - flag poles, lamp posts, telephone boxes, that kind of thing - then they met up, got into the van, and drove off to the gig - cut to the live stuff, then we added an imaginary sequence of them being presented awards using Ultra, greenscreened before the gig, finishing with some end shots of autograph signing.

This is all great if you know what you need to shoot before - afterwards, you may just not have the material - could you re-shoot any?

We had 2 cameras rolling during their perfomance and did get some close ups. You say to use the master track of the song...do you mean the original song? I was actually thinking of using one because his voice was kind of overpowering because they had his mic turned up too high. I was able to get some tight shots and some artistic shots knowing that I might need them for the demo. I was doing some editing today on it and the more I listened to them the more I noticed he doesn't really sing that well. That's one of the main reasond I'm thinking of using an original tune. I want this to turn out good becaue it could mean more business for me down the road.

Do a web search for an electronic press kit (epk). It should give you a few ideas. Check this out http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vif6G1LqDHk

Lalo - here's a project I did for my friend's band. I taped several of their shows but for each show, either the sound was bad from the mixing board or the performance was off. So I decided to do a collage from various performances synced to their studio track. It was a pain in tha A to do because I had to slow down the video on almost all the tracks to mach the slower tempo of the studio recording. Anyway, they seemed to like it.

http://vargaproductions.com/learnin

That was pretty good Art. I may get a recorded song from him to use instead of the live song from the show.