Song Spinner is an occasional series that I produce for The Day with music writer Rick Koster. The concept is simple – shoot a musical performance, interview the songwriter, combine the two pieces. The problem with being a one-man-band video journalist and shooting a musical performance for editing is it’s difficult to get the variety of shots necessary to have an edit every three to five seconds. These pieces are about the music and the story behind the song, but in order to keep the viewer visually interested it’s best not to linger on a single shot for too long.

To get around this, I started bringing multiple cameras to these shoots, first two, and then adding a third. Almost every time we shot one of these, the musician or band asked to do a second take. I realized that I could use this second take as a chance to switch up camera angles and double the number of angles I have to edit from.

Usually, the performers have been happier with the second take, so I use the first take for a lot of the close-ups: hands strumming guitars, isolated camera on the drummer, etc. I also keep an eye out for details that I want to catch the second tie around with an eye toward where I will make the edits: the guitar player’s foot on the pedal board right before the solo, or the place where the bass starts in the opening of the song.

For this shoot, I used a Sony EX1R, a Sony PMW 200, and a GoPro Hero 4. The GoPro is nice because it can fit into small places, like right next to a drum kit, and also because it is wide enough to get the whole band in a small room.

Synching up the video clips during the edit can be tricky. We chose to make these live performances, instead of lip-synching to a playback track the way you would do in a music video. It just seems more authentic that way. But because it’s live, the tempos of the two takes are almost never exactly the same. It’s not too hard to synch up the three cameras from an individual take. I either clap at the start of the recording to imitate a film slate, or use something like the waveform of the drumbeat to synch clips on the timeline. You could also use software like PluralEyes.

I synch the two takes separately, and then determine which one I will use for the audio track. I then start matching up the other take to the chosen audio track. This involves cutting the clips every measure or two to get them in synch with the others. This leaves gaps on the timeline, but having six angles to choose from makes it easy to cover the gaps. When I get to choosing which angles to use when, there is always a little bit of sliding left and right on the timeline to get the vocals and drum beats to match exactly. The result is a video that looks like it was shot with six cameras, but requires bringing far less gear along.