Three concerts filmed — check! Each one was a pleasure and a half. It was so gratifying to spend time with amazing musicians and capture the intimacy of these small shows.
My partner and I are currently in the editing phase, and I’m having such a fun time working with all the audio we were able to acquire. We filmed with multiple cameras, and also captured audio from the soundboard or through microphones that I set up. The quality from the sound board and the mic’s we used is infinitely better than the audio we got from the shotgun mic’s attached to our cameras. Since the video has audio already attached to it, we can hear what’s happening and can match up the good audio from the sound board or other mics, and then delete the audio that was originally attached to the video.
It’s strangely satisfying looking at the waveforms and finding the spot where it matches up. It’s like a puzzle; all the pieces are there, we just have to figure out how they fit together. Well, I suppose that’s how making a documentary is in general. I listened to an episode of Freakonomics recently and one of their guests put it like this:
“Documentaries are a little different because you’re telling an existing story. But you have to go where the story takes you, and when you start out you may not know all the ins and outs of the plot. So, it’s a little like putting a jigsaw puzzle together without the picture on the box. You’re kind of feeling your way through the dark.”