Music Video Editing 101

Question

I posted this a few years back - before it rolled off the end of the discussions, I moved it to Dave Slater's ProAppTips.com which is currently in limbo due to hacker problems, but he retrieved the text for me and I thought it might be handy to post now. I should update it for using MultiClips, but they can be problematic, depending on how the video was shot and the timing/overlap of the coverage available (see: MultiCam and Music Videos). For now, I'll just post it as it was originally written.
_*Music video editing 101*_
Although I've cut probably over 250 music videos, this is only how I work. What works for you may be entirely different and more productive for you. I am not here to champion these techniques and I invite anyone else to post how they do it.
Okay down to business. Digitizing material: I capture all the available material, preferably in 20-30 minute chunks. Among other things, the large chunks can come in handy if there is a discrepancy between the timecode on the offline tapes and the master tapes. I watch the material as it comes in and note anything of interest (cool shots, etc). After capture, I go thru and put markers at the start of each take and scene. I'll go into the philosophy of logging/overlogging later.
Now, music videos can most often be divided into two sections - performance and concept (or story). The first thing to tackle is the performance. Not only is this locked to the areas of the song being performed (barring cheating choruses or other repeating stuff), but it helps you to know where you want to put the story (which is where your performance coverage is the weakest).
How I cut performance is this. First, I try to pick a good overall base take of performance - this is often a wider shot that covers the whole band. I usually have chosen this take while watching the material as I capture. I put the master audio in the sequence and cut this video take onto V1. This is because I find it easier to cut into something rather than cut a shot into black. Now I go back and start at the first take and hopefully there was a smart slate used, but however I do it, I get the take lined up so that the frame in the viewer is at the same point in the song as the frame in the canvas, then set gang sync (I have a this mapped to a keypress).
I then play what I have in the viewer until I see something I like. Now, because I've ganged the edit with this take, it's been following along, so I can quickly pop over to see what is at that point in my edit and see if what I just saw in the take looks better. If it does, I cut it in, If not, I can ignore it, or cut it onto V2/V3/V4, etc and set its visibility off (ctrl-b). Why would I do that? Maybe later I need to change the shot because the singer doesn't like himself from that side, or I need more shots of the drummer, or I've changed the edit and the shot doesn't work anymore, or maybe I'll be able to cheat it in at another point of the song. The point is, I'm going thru the material now and I might as well save anything I like so I won't have to look for it later. Tossing it onto a higher video track keeps it in sync with where it should fall in the song.
Now go I back and keep playing the take and when I see the next thing I like, repeat the process. I continue this until I've finished the take. Then I repeat this for all takes. It's time consuming, but I've found it to be the only way to ensure you've given due consideration to all the material and you can say you have the strongest performance in your edit. And your goal is to make a performance cut so tight that it will be painful to give up areas of it to concept. I also keep a bin/sequence of non-sync cutaways - maybe a drum hit, maybe a look from the lead singer, maybe a bass riff. These are important to your cut, but you can treat them like concept - i.e. you can put them anywhere you need to.
When you've finished your performance cut, duplicate your sequence (You might also have done this during stages of your performance cut, just to keep backups). The reason you want to now is to always have a pure performance cut to go back to.
Now consider the concept. Sometimes it warrants cutting it all together as a story complete, other times it will only function as cutaways or it illustrates specific lines in the song, etc. However you get the concept organized, the performance cut will provide a roadmap as to where to place the concept. Sometimes it's blatantly obvious (like you have no performance for a certain area), other times (if you've done a good job on the performance cut) it will be a struggle to find where to put it. I always keep my performance on its own layer/s and add a new layer for the concept. This is to allow ease of re-arranging the story. If you have it on its own layer, you won't need to replace the missing performance if you shift the concept around, you'll just reveal the existing (wonderfully tight) performance below.
I could go on and on about this, but those are the basics. As to timing, I usually allow myself 2 days for capture and performance cut. Third day is concept. Fourth day massaging the overall edit. Send off that night for comments. Fifth day is changes from artist/label/management. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Finally a bit about logging of footage. When I first started editing, it was on a linear, tape-based system. So I had a wall of thermal printouts to guide me to my selects and whenever I needed a specific shot, it usually involved a lot of shuttling thru tape. An inevitable beneficial fallout of this work flow is that I'd often find a better shot than the one I was searching for, simply because I had to shuttle to find my intended shot.
This fostering of happy accidents was lost when I started editing non-linear. Because I could instantly go where ever I wanted, I only ever found what I wanted and lost a certain spontaneity to my edits. They became more predictable. It took me a little while to realize this and to come up with some solutions.
First of all, I don't overlog footage. None of this clips named "The one where Jack finds the beans and discovers the true meaning of friendship in wide shot with the cow OOF over his right shoulder (sky has clouds)". I make it so I always know where to find my shot, but not so I can just get there without shuttling a bit. Also, I try to keep a sequence of selects. Shots that I like, but haven't found a use for yet. Thats where I always go to find a shot I need - that way, shuttling thru the sequence, I am exposed to shots that I know are good and may be better than the shot I think I am looking for.
Anyone else want to post their work flow?
Patrick

Answer 1

Great workflow Patrick. The one main thing missing that I use in music video editing is the grouping of multiclips to group all of your performance takes into one clip. For those that haven't used this then you have access to all performance takes at any given point in the song. This is handy as you might have 50 to 100 takes on some videos. The thing that makes a grouping of multiclips easy is the use of a timecode slate and an audio master (though aux code grouping can be done without it). You then assign an auxiliary timecode to each take and group your mulitclip by that. In avid land I subclip a masterclip by takes. Unfortunately Apple has done a really dumb thing in FCP. When you make subclips from a master clip and assign auxiliary timecode it will ripple the aux code of other subs from the master clip. Completely useless for music video. The solution is to capture each take in its own master clip but that is a long and tedious log that for me is totally not needed for a music video. I wish Apple would address this (it as been discussed in this thread) but it has been unchanged since the introduction of multiclips. That's why I always cut my music videos in Avid.