Last week I was part of a class that taught video production techniques to people that wanted to take their shooting up a level. I taught the audio part of the class and this video was the final exercise. I mixed and recorded this band in a small TV studio in Boulder, CO.
So this video isn't really about the visual part of this video, but more about the sound. I let one of the students use my hand held set up with my 7D because he wanted to try to use a DSLR. So the footage isn't me shooting. I set the camera up for him, white balance, exposure, SS and frame rate. I showed him how to operate it and let him go telling him to just don't drop it! He had his assignment: Bass player, drummer and hand held cut aways. As well as artsy shots. Again, this isn't about the footage, but the music.
There were a total of 8 or 9 different cameras rolling on this band. A real music video will be coming out soon. This is just the footage I had access to and my recordings of the song.
I was really busy with the mixing and recording. I had a total of only 4 channels to record to using my Sound Devices 552 (a 5 channel mixer with a 2 track recorder built in) and my Tascam DR-100. I used almost every mic in my kit to get this done. The band had their gear which I used to help augment my stuff (mostly their vocal mics and feeds out of their 8 channel mixer board). I had my Schoeps and my RE50B on the drum kit. RE50B in the kick drum and the Schoeps (via a Sennheiser G2 wireless feeding 48v phantom to the mic) on the snare, cymbals and cowbells. My AKG 300B-93 on the bass (hardwired), a COS-11 (Lectro 411A wireless system) on the guitar amp to just name a few of the mics.
This wasn't the most optimal setup to do this as I had to fiddle with two different mixing surfaces. First, the band had their set-ups the way they liked to do live shows. They didn't like me messing with their stuff so much, but this was for a recording and not a live show. The audio levels are radically different so a compromise had to be made. Mostly on their part. So I had to mix a few things down and up, change some of their levels because that was the feed for the vocals and keyboard. Then I had to balance that with the mics I had direct control over to finally come up with a mix I liked at the 552. But I also ran my Tascam DR-100 recorder and in post I had to mix in those recordings to fill in the holes left in the 552 recordings. Mostly the bass sounds on that recording.
Two separate recorders needed to be synced and then that was synced to the footage. Of course the audio recordings on the camera are only scratch tracks and only to be used in edit. They were muted in end.
The funny part is, I've never done this kind of recording before. I've done very simple work around bands where we were covering them as part of an event or simply taking a L/R mixed feed from a board, but never actually mixing and recording on my own.
And if you didn't guess by the name of the band, it's reggae music.
http://vimeo.com/37466724
So go and get a nice set of headphones and please enjoy! Let me know what you think. 
