LIVE EP
Blog
This part of the collaborative project will be talking about the Live EP. The aim of this EP is to record something I can be extremely proud of whilst still keeping the authenticity and striped back setup of live acoustic performances in a way that I don't think the studio EP could achieve. Acoustic performances have always been a huge part of my musical identity but this project is hopefully going to test and push me out of my comfort zone. Recording live sessions outside is not something that I have done before so planning for unfamiliar scenarios is something to carefully consider. Eventually I want to have 6 songs by the end of this project and I have completed 3 to date. The idea of recording songs live and releasing them into the world scared me as it is almost a polar opposite to recording in a studio. You have limited room for error and very little can be edited when recording live, but that could solve my issue of overworking acoustic songs too much. I reached out to one of my closest friends, Tom Storey, who is a talented videographer and we began discussing how we would bring the video and audio to life. Tom and I have been collaborating in music and in videos for a while now. I am often blown away by some of the shots Tom gets and I can always hear him singing my songs, even in the background of some of this footage too!
The audio was more my side of the project but that too included collaboration with choice of location to achieve the best sound. Multiply discussions with lecturers began about how to capture the best sound in all these locations while keeping the continuity across the whole EP with the use of the same microphones. Some lecturers said that problems will arise if I keep using my Aston Spirit microphone for all of the vocal recordings as some will be inside and some will be outside. This could lead to the problems, such as interference from wind and cars, but it was a risk I was willing to take. With the videos, that is where the main part of collaboration takes place. Tom had a huge part to play in the planning of these videos as we had multiple sessions discussing what songs should be filmed where and what locations best fit each song. Most of the songs have personal reasons to why they are performed in certain places but we also wanted to create beautiful landscapes for the videos to be enticing to the listeners.
Tom Storey
Better Than a Lie
Tom and I had lots of different ideas about the first song. My main idea was to have 'Better Than a Lie' filmed in the place I had written it - my flat. The comfortable setting seemed appropriate in conjunction with the lyrics. We went to film this as a 3 camera multi shot video. Whilst filming, Tom suggested doing multiple takes of audio recordings and moving the cameras as well to create a bit more movement in the final product, so that is what we did. We did about 4 takes which included quite a few different camera angles for this song. When we were happy we started to discuss adding in a few landscape shots too as we wanted to give the video more depth and movement. On this recording I did some handheld videos to add in post-production but would like to add some drone shots at a later date. When it came to the editing, Tom started by laying out the video for the audio take we most preferred, in this case it was a joint decision to use the fourth take. It was my favourite and I think it best encapsulated the song in its entirety. The only problem with this take is that the videos did not work as successfully as takes 1 and 2. That was due to 2 of the cameras being Sony 4k Z-90s and 1 being a Sony A7. The cameras both have a different qualities about them and the Z-90s seemed to lack the colour that the A7 had. This arose a problem that still occurred with the other two songs as well and is something to work on for future songs. Because some of these shots on the fourth take did not look as good, Tom began to edit the shots together and sync over the video from takes 1, 2 and 3 to the audio from take 4. It was a tedious process so I began to take over at about half way and the video started to come together and look a lot better than if we were only using the video from just take 4. The finished product at the moment looks very good. We want to add in some more stills and drone footage, but that can be done at a later date when we try and make the videos all have a more defined style.
Start of Something New
On the second video we wanted to encapsulate the wild and thought this song best suited being in a forest. 'Start of Something New' was written in my garden back in Exeter but this wasn't the best location to film and thought that finding somewhere that would look better whilst still feeling at home would work well. The location is close to my heart as it is near to where we shot our first music video together for a unit in second year. We planned to do multiple takes and sync the videos over the preferred audio, like the first video but I accidentally put a jacket on for the one take we both thought was the best. This meant that the continuity of the video would look odd having a jacket on and off for parts. This gave us only 3 shots of footage to work with. We both thought this was going to cause problems but all the camera angles look great, they just needed colour grading. I am still learning about this so again this video is not completely finished but Tom and I worked on the video editing together. We have discussed adding in other shots from the stabiliser to add more movement and from a drone to achieve some landscape atmospheric shots. This is yet to be done but because we know the location and know what clothes I was wearing we can recreate some more of the footage at a later date. It's not ideal but we could work with it to create a good looking video. The audio recording for this song sounds amazing and both Tom and I are very pleased with it. Seton Daunt also said it is one of my best audio recordings to this date which gives me confidence for the other songs as this was my first time recording audio outside.
Losing a Friend
For the third recording we decided to 'go big or go home' as Chris Blanden suggested. This song was called 'Losing a Friend' and was loosely based on Simon and Garfunkel’s disjointed brotherly partnership. I thought this song would sound good in or around a cave to get a nice bit of natural reverb and Tom thought that outside near a cave would look amazing and best suited this song too. We tried to learn from the little mistakes of the other recordings and attempted to record this song to an even higher standard than the last recording. The location was at Cheddar Gorge, we drove over there and neither of us had been before. As I was driving, Tom started scouting for locations to film. The first one we found was great. It wasn't so much a cave, like we planned to film in but it worked really well with an entrance to a mini cave so we could put a camera in to get a silhouette shot like we planned. The only problem we had whilst choosing a filming location was that it would either be on the road or require a long walk. Being on the road would come with audio issues but trekking for a long way with gear is hard too so would have to compromise either way. We kept looking and Tom found another little cave entrance, only this one went quite deep and we went in and walked back about 20 metres. This was a great cave but the silhouette shot wouldn't have captured me as there was a bit of a step into the cave and it was up a hill too. It was a lovely place and was great to explore but Tom and I decided to head back to the first spot we found to make that work. The visuals looked amazing from the first few camera angles we saw and we took the advice from our first video and did multiple takes in different camera locations. In the unedited silhouette video you can see Tom on the hill in the background getting shots from higher up. His running around made me laugh so we ended up doing a lot of recordings. I was messing up a lot as the concentration level was hard due to the road being very near by. I did some audio tests before recording and the levels were fine as my vocals and guitar could be heard way above the traffic. After about 20 takes of me swearing and messing up, we reset all the cameras and audio recordings and had a refresh. The next take was 'the one' and sounded amazing, the audio was great and I listened to it there and then and said 'yep this is the one!' We then proceeded to do 4 more takes where Tom shot multiple different angles. We also did our first stabiliser shot to add the movement that was lacking in the other two videos. Then after that we made everything look nice in the location for the drone shots. Tom took some amazing aerial footage of landscapes and then we played around with some shots of me walking across and on the road. Due to a lot of footage the video editing took a while and is not fully complete as some final tweaks may be done but this live recording is the one I am the most pleased about. We learnt from the other two, even though we are happy with them, this one is the most successful as we have more video material to work with.
Overall Successes
This project has already had lots of success. Like I previously said, the choice of location in relation to the songs performed was well thought out by both of us. The use of high quality professional equipment from both of us and the standard it was executed was great. Tom's eye for detail in capturing a variety of professional shots helped to enhance my creativity and helped me love the song even more as I see it as a joint project. His creative vision also helped capture the essence of the song and the location at the same time and these videos don’t feel disjointed. 3 videos were completed in a good time frame to a very high standard. There has been good communication throughout this project with planning, the ability to share ideas and to compromise before and during each song recording session. Tom has shown to be just as dedicated to the project as I am and this includes mutual respect for one another and our work.
Improvements Going Forward
Some things to improve going forward might include the consistency of videos. Due to this project being a learning process, I believe that improvement has been evident between videos. However this has impacted consistency with regards to capturing multiple camera angles and is something both of us would like to work on for the remainder of this EP. A limitation of this project includes the need to hire high quality equipment for filming. Toms’ camera is of a higher quality than that of the other cameras so on some of the camera angles, the consistency is noticeable.
