Last night Jeremy and I recorded a Director's/Editor's commentary on raw footage and final cut of Cleary's Time Is My Crisis music video. Not that anyone cares what we have to say, but it was really a technological marvel that we even did it. We're on opposite sides of the country, after all.
Turns out the easiest way to accomplish this was on our computers and we didn't know it until mere hours before we did it. Microsoft's Movie Maker, included with Windows XP, has a narration feature built in. You cue up the video (which I had previously encoded and Jeremy had previously FTP'd from my computer), click narrate, the video starts and the microphone is activated. And so we did. We called up on our cell phones, counted 3, 2, 1, click, and recorded our interactive commentary. The resulting files were compressed Windows Media files, which Jeremy promptly FTP'd back to me.
As I type, I am mixing the files (with generous Noise Reduction on Jeremy's side (what's up with your sound card?!)), and hooking them back up with the video. Now there's a DVD extra feature for you!
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8 comments:
It has nothing to do with whether or not people want to hear what we say. Let's face it: we had tons o' fun doing this!
In fact, I'm so enamored with audio commentaries now that I seriously think we should do one for Jeffrey L. Allen. It would be a feature on the Enhanced CD where you could listen to the entire album with audio commentary. We would tell you things like lyrics that got changed or how we came upon a certain drum beat or the process of making Guaranteed Overnight Delivery. I could talk about the story that the album tries (and fails) to tell and what certain lines mean in respect to the overall story arc.
To accomplish this I believe you would have the audio of the album running throughout. As the commentators commentated that volume would go to the background but still be audible. When there wasn't anything good to say the album volume would raise to take the foreground again.
What say you? Are you in?
On a completely unrelated note: I just want to point out that even though I've written 6 less posts than you I have actually written more words. I guess that means I'm long winded.
And I apologize for this.
Random Kate has ongoing studio issues. The studio has been difficult to work with, so it's been tough getting it wrapped up.
Anyway, I'm really excited if it gets done soon to release it. They are solid musicians and they write solid songs. Very fun, but even more fun to see live. They rock.
Joshua, no comment on the JLA commentary track?
I have never heard of an audio commentary for audio. It sounds cool, and I don't mind doing things noone has done before. However, I can't see that this would practically work. You wouldn't be able to catch the things we're alluding to, because we'd be talking over them.
Some solutions that come to mind: Carefully scripted, we could make sure we got our points in without talking over important musical parts. Or, we could intro the songs with commentary, but not talk over the songs.
Now what I really had planned was a complex series of HTML and MP3 files, outlining the evolution of the various songs, with text commentary from both us. That's doable.
Hey, we'll shoot a bunch of videos for this album, and we can comment those to death!
Brock and Gabe: Start rolling!
OK! Brock, let's do it!
I’m always up for more video projects and work. If I filmed as much as I typed, well…you’d watch out, that’s what.
So yeah, let’s do it.
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