Real Workflows - Flesh: Meet the Band (Pt 3)

Using Adobe After Effects to upscale SD video.

Last week in his week in Real Workflows - Flesh: Meet the Band (Pt 2), we discussed some of the creative decisions that were made while restoring and re-editing the intro video for the band Flesh.

This week we continue our discussion of the workflow used in restoring the Flesh: Meet the Band video, including some of the music decisions that were made. One such music decision was the choice to use music available from the YouTube music library. This was a budget friendly way to guarantee that there would be no copyright issues going forward.

Markus, lead guitar.

For the sequence with lead guitarist, Mark Cherone, we used a dance studio in Medford, MA as our location. We shot with what was to be the music bed playing back in the background (this happened to be the copyrighted track that was removed for this revision of the video).

None of the natural sound was usable from the raw source. This meant any sounds, such as Mark's feet landing from his dance jump, were added in post.

Paul Bettencourt, lead vocalist.

Singer Paul Bettencourt's sequence was another location shot. This was shot in one of Paul's sibling's home. The Bettencourts were also able to supply all of the children for the shot.

We were able to use a lot of the sound recorded with the video for this shot. The only sounds added in post were the yawn of the baby and Paul's sigh as he removes his wig.

After laying down all of the 480i source clips into my sequence and replacing each clip with a 720p Adobe After Effects Composition of that clip, I selected the music for each section and laid that into my sequence. After the music was laid in, I was able to fine tune the edits in Adobe Premiere Pro. Some of that fine-tuning was done to correspond with musical cues while others were edits that just made more visual sense.

Choosing the right sound and music during a video edit can help establish the mood. One piece of music was chosen for each member of the band. For Stephen's music, a driving hard rock piece was chosen to push the tracking shot along. For Michael's section, another hard rock piece was used, this time a more percussion-driven piece. Since Markus' scene took place in a dance studio, it was decided to use something with more of a disco feel. Finally, Paul's birthday party incorporates a music selection that was more of an up and bouncy feel.

Flesh performing on the street.

For the final scene where the band is performing on a street, we set up again in downtown West Acton, MA. This shot also incorporates a low-tech tracking shot. This time it was shot from the back of a pickup truck. Instead of using YouTube's royalty free music for this section, I decided to go with one of the band's actual songs. The song I chose was one of the songs they played live a lot. It also helped that it was it's tempo was very close to the song the band is performing on the street.

It was a lot of fun to work with each of the band members. They all were very easy to direct and were able to adjust their performances appropriately with each take.

Flesh performing the song "Almighty Man" live on the radio in Boston, MA