Producing Music to Video

[lukebredin]

Hi there

 

Sorry if this sort of question has been asked before but even though finding similar questions and answers I can not find what I am looking for.

 

I have recently just started to make a little video and this is the first time I have tried to write music to a video. Iv done all the titles and intros in Final Cut Express and Livetype and have exported the movie and imported that into Logic Pro to do the music.

 

I understand about using the detect cuts button and then using the beat mapping to bring certain scene cuts into time with a bar and I can understand when scoring to big videos why it works (and should) this way round. But this obviously changes the tempo of the track. I know about locking regions to SMPTE position too. But My predicament is this, where I have used some apple loops it changes the tempo of them too which kind of messes up the music after the tempo change.

 

Now with this little vid basically it would be very handy to anchor a point in the video as basically I just need this one scene cut to snap to bar 9 where a nice crash comes in with out actually changing the tempo of the track. So for me it would be simple just to move the video but I can't seem to mark the video in a way where I can make this happen.

 

Is there any suggestions of how I should be properly approaching this and if I was doing over music to videos where it wouldn't be just a simple case of lining the video up, what I do about tempo changes when using the beat mapping to bring scene cuts inline with a bar but also using apple loops?

 

Thanks in advance for the help!

[fuzzfilth]

People get much too strung up on hitting scene cuts. My guess is that's because we're all spoiled by music videos. But those work the other way round. The music is there and the video is edited to fit the music. But you knew that.

 

A scene cut can damaturgically be anything from extremely important through obvious through understated through invisible right down to extremely annoying. Whether you want to pronounce a cut or hide it will determine if you need to hit or avoid it. I'd rather hit an important part of the storyline of the movie instead of one of the poles of its structural exoskeleton, so to speak. Like, the flick of the eye where A. Schwarzenegger suddenly recognizes that he's not the Govn'r and it all was just an implanted memory, this is the important part to hit, not the cut that leads into or out of that scene, both of which might be utterly uninteresting.

 

Now, working with loops and insisting on hitting points (cuts or not) will leave you unhappy as you will not get away without more or less clumsy tempo changes. But then, you will have problems too when the dramaturgy itself calls for ever increasing tempos and tempo changes, which it does a lot, in general. You need to incorporate breaks, stops, signature changes or other musical devices ahead of the tempo changes to make them less obvious.

 

This is all much easier the less repetitive the music is, and a Loop is the epitome of repetitive.

 

Christian

[lukebredin]

I agree that a loop can be repetitive but you can also do a lot to make it not. What it is, is that I have an evolving piece that isn't too repetitive but there are bits of it here and there that are apple loops and an apple loop by nature will change tempo and this had put me in a spot. But then thinking about this some more I could just bounce them tracks in place and lock to SMPTE position of all reagions then do the beat mapping and that has solved my problem. With this I needed it on the scene cut as that is where it has changed from the tittle intros to the actual video and works well with the crash.

 

Thanks for your advise and I agree with you (from an amateur point of view) in most places it is in points in the scene where things need to happen not necessarily the scene cuts, it was in this case on the cut and wondered as it was the only bit maybe I could mark the movie and move that instead!!

 

Thanks again