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4/12/2004
I'm alive I haven't posted here in forever...damn. So much to talk about it's not worth getting into! Wedding plans are coming along nicely. Best Men and Grooms Men can be a pain in the ass when they happen to be female. People just need to back off and let us decide how our wedding is gonna be...I swear. I love my motorcycle. Me and Richard ride it all the time. I've sold all KINDS of shit on eBay. Anyway, the only reason I'm posting is because I wrote a little article on how to shoot "Talkie" movies using a silent camera. I'm sending it privately via email to this guy who bought one of my cameras, and I want to post it here so I can retain SOME menial claim on the copyright. Don't even bother reading it. Steve ----- Capturing sound for use with video captured by a silent film. By Steven Stewart One of the coolest things about shooting film is the awesome grain and feel that film gives you. That 24 frame per second flicker gives a whole level of depth and dimension that video, for whatever reason cannot capture. Film can be cheaply and easily shot using several different formats, including Super 8, 8mm, and 16mm. Super 8 has recently experienced a boom in popularity, and equipment can be bought left and right on eBay. The biggest downside of shooting film is that film (unless you have a Hollywood budget) is silent. While some 16mm formats include sound, and there was the venerable Super 8 Sound, doing this on a budget is near impossible. So the task falls on you to figure out how to get sound with your film. The "easy answer" is that, well, you could just run a tape recorder while you film your movie, and then sync the two up later. Many kids tried this with their Super 8 cameras in the 70's and early 80's. There was a problem. "Creep." You see, most consumer level cameras are not "crystal synched." This means the motor in the tape recorder, and the motor in the film camera will turn at SLIGHTLY different speeds. The result is that once you get the audio and video synched up, the slight differences in the audio and video will start to show. Soon, the moving lips and the audio track won't line up, and the human eye can detect the slightest difference. Computers to the rescue! We can fix this problem using digital manipulation of our audio and video. This requires taking the "Tape recorder and a camera" method, and taking advantage of technology to make it work. The first step to doing this is your actual shoot. While you can still use a tape recorder, I suggest a digital audio capture method. Purists will complain that this doesn't give the best sound quality (unless you use super expensive equipment like a DAT Tape recorder) I say that the main problem most people have with recording audio (room noise, poorly setup microphones, etc) FAR outweigh the problem of using "compressed" audio. I have found I prefer to use MiniDiscs to record my audio. MiniDiscs are the tiny CDs in plastic shells. They are recorded digitally, can be transferred to a computer (if you have the right equipment), and are easy to use on the day of your shoot. The other option is recording directly into your PC using either a laptop, or actually setting up an entire desktop on the set. I believe the computer will give you better sound, assuming you don't compress your audio (i.e. use WAV instead of MP3) and you have a good sound card. "Lights, Sound, Camera, ACTION!" Now that you have your equipment setup you have to actually shoot your film. The first thing to do is to get the sound rolling. Sound is cheap to roll. Film costs money. So start the sound, and get it ready. Once your completely ready to start the action, start your camera rolling. Before you call action, do a slate slap. You've seen these, in every Film or TV show when they're on a set, the guy holds out the slate with some numbers written on it, and closes it, making a loud smack sound. You gotta do this. If you HAVE to clap your hands instead of use a real slate then, that's OK, but if you can get a slate, GET ONE! Be sure the camera captures this, directly and head on. If you're using multiple cameras, they ALL need to see the slate close. Then allow your actors to do their thing, and as soon as they're done, do a "Tail Slap" Do this by holding the slate upside down, and slapping it closed again. Remember when you close the slate to get a LOUD, solid slap. You gotta do this every time the camera starts and stops. This is why it's sometimes suggested directors hate to "cut" because cutting requires resynching audio and video. That means another slate slap. Don't EVER EVER forget the "Tail Slap." or synching the audio in post will be a serious pain I have to leave your record keeping up to you, but I highly recommend you write on the slate the scene and take number, and have whoever slaps the slate audibly state the scene and take number so that the recording device picks it up. It makes it a lot easier to decide which audio snippet goes with which video clip. Quick tip...never forget to wrap your camera in some kind of sound deadening material. In the "biz" they refer to this as a "blimp." A "Silent Camera" is usually very noisy, because it was designed without any concern to how loud it would be. Sound Cameras are quieter because they were designed realizing there'd be a microphone present. So "blimp" your camera so it's sound won't show up on the minidisc recorder. You might want to try running the camera with no film in it to test your sound levels and make sure you're not making too much noise BEFORE you start shooting. Transfer everything to the computer. At this point, you have shot everything and have to start editing. First step is getting everything digital so you can work with it in the computer. The easy part is getting our audio "online." This should be easy if you used a MiniDisc recorder that has some kind of bridge that will connect it with your computer. That's up to you to figure out. If you recorded directly to the PC then this part is already done. It's a little more difficult to get film onto the computer. There are many different ways (and many different price points) for doing this. The most popular is a true "Rank Telecine" where the film is scanned by a high quality scanner, frame by frame, and compiled into a video. Usually, you can get the video in a variety of formats, but I suggest DVCam or MiniDV (DVCam is better, of course) and then get THAT transferred into the computer. DVD is also a possibility now, but it will be up to you to figure how to get the video files off the DVD as I've never done this. A cheaper method is playing your film through a projector, directly at a perfectly white, small screen. Then point your video camera DIRECTLY at this screen, and tape. This is not NEARLY as good as telecine, but it's cheap and free...soo it's an option. There are also "in between" options, where someone with a special setup can have a projector project directly onto a video camera's CCD, thus getting your video tape that way. Whatever method you use is up to you, and there are a MILLION of them online. You just gotta look around. People actually sell "Film transfer" services on eBay. Synching it up the budget way. Once you have everything in the computer, you have to edit it. The First part is synching up the audio to the video. To do this, open your video editing program (like Premiere) and open the video clip you want to work with. Find the 2 slaps, and slowly, frame by frame go through until you have found the EXACT frame where the slate closed shut. Also find the one where the slate was shut upside down. You will have to figure the difference, in time, between these two frames. The program your using will have to tell you this info. But there should be a way to get a time count between these two frames. It should be in hundredths of a second. Then you have to open your sound editing program (I like SoundForge) and determine the difference between the two slaps. To do this, look at the wave form of the audio, and listen for the "CLAP" noise of the slate closing. when you find it, look at the waveform and find the absolute peak. Find the same peak at the tail slap, and find out how long this difference is. Then, you can use the software to stretch or shorten the file to match the difference in your video. So, say your video file was 35.63 seconds long, and your audio clip is 36.965 seconds long, you will shrink the audio clip to 35.630 seconds long. Then the audio and video match in length exactly. The slight change in length we're making to the audio file should not affect the "pitch" of the voice in any noticeable way. Now take the audio file, with its new stretched out length and load it into the video editing program. Line up the slap sound in the audio file with the "slate close" frame on the video, and everything should be matched up! You finally have your audio/video file assembled and can begin editing. This process sounds lengthy and painful. It can be! but the more you do it the more you'll learn HOW to do it and the better you'll be. My closing advice is to remember....always shoot short bits. a 2 minute video is MUCH more difficult than a 30 second video. The reason is the longer the file, the less consistent the "creep" and then doing a line up can be VERY painful indeed. Good luck!
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