As some of you may know (following along with me on Twitter and Facebook), I've been working with a local musician on producing a few music videos. Although I don't have any video to share at this point, I'll shed some light into the process that I've been using to create the videos.

First things first, we need a fantastic copy of the music (I mean, it IS a music video). Our budget ($0) rules out a professional studio session, but here's what we did instead.

We found a quiet room and I had the audio set up roughly like the diagram above. Our process:

1. Record guitar track only
2. Play recorded guitar track through headphones for musician as we record her vocals
3. Repeat as necessary
4. Combine and sync in post

We also tried a few with the singing and playing simultaneously, just for comparison. I was able to monitor the recording the entire time. The Zoom H4n was amazing the entire time.

To record video, (after the brainstorming, storyboarding, etc.) I needed a method to ease the syncing in post. The only audio I want was already recorded, but I still needed to make sure it lined up with what's being filmed. So here's what I did.

I split the audio playing out of the Zoom H4n into two. One feeds into a speaker so that the musician can sing/play/act accordingly to her song. The other feeds directly into the mic input jack on my Canon 7D. Essentially, the only thing the 7D "hears" is the original track. This will make syncing a breeze in post, especially with the help of PluralEyes.

What does this mean? At the end of the day, I'm left with dozens of takes of the musician in different angles, locations, etc., synced perfectly to the best possible audio recording we have, and ready for me to cut. Cool, no?

Update on Wed, February 3, 2010 at 10:03 AM by Steve Tan

I realized now that I should've probably done some research into how the professionals do it. I was making this up as I went - it made sense to me under my particular set of resources and restrictions. Notice how the title says "How I Make a Music Video", this isn't an official how-to. Let me know in the comments how else I could've done it!