For the past few days, I've been working on a "virtual choir" video for a school district event. First time doing this.
Don't let anyone fool you: putting one if these together is very challenging, especially with kids, and I'm working with less than 20 "members". The audio is actually the toughest part, because not everyone stays in tempo. If I hadn't quickly learned DaVinci Resolve, I don't think I could do it. Elastic Stretch is saving me big time.
^ Some of the students were absolutely dead-on with my guide track. But those that were off needed cuts with cross-fades or time stretching.
The video part is much easier. It's just a matter of crop and transform for each of the layers, though I really wish there was a "snap to grid" on the campus.
^ The most important part I want everyone to take away from this:
These videos might look and sound cool, but they are NOT a suitable replacement for making music together. Even if it's a group of professional musicians, there is so much post work involved to make it all stick together. Each component of the finished product may be various degrees away from reality depending on how much work it needed, the whole thing is an artificial construct.
That might seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people think this is how we should be making music now.
I'm only doing this video because I was asked to, with less than 2 week's notice, to get a group of students together to sing the Star-Spangled Banner for a virtual event.
Note to self: Never agree to do this again with this piece of music. It's one of the most difficult things we could have asked the kids to do, and the editing is similarly tough.