Behind the scenes: Old Man Tree music video

Recently I shot a nice music video clip for Omnia. Today a few quick ‘technical’ notes on how this video clip was produced.

A while back we planned to do a live and acoustic recording of the Omnia song ‘Old Man Tree’ at Dreamharps in Mijdrecht.

recording the beautiful song 'Old Man Tree' in one take

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So our first step was to capture the audio the best we could. We recorded this using 2 condenser mics and the output of the (electric) piano directly into a firewire audio interface fed into a MacBook with Logic Pro. That works very well as a mobile recording studio. We put some carpets on the floor to diminish the room reverb (stone floor).

the mobile recording unit with Macbook Pro, note the carpets! (picture by Jenny)

After testing and tweaking, the first full take we recorded was a keeper! That went smooth!

thinking about the setting and the best camera framing (picture by Jenny)

With the audio done we removed the microphones, obsolete cables and prepped the scene: it was time for the video part.

focusing on Steve (picture by Jenny)

slowly moving the Cineslider to get a nice moving shot 

Steve and Jenny did their best playback ever when we played the audio from the laptop. We shot around 6 full takes from different angles and a couple of pick-ups. The Red Scarlet camera was used on tripod, a Kessler Cineslider and handhold. We recorded in 4K. Lighting was very simple: 2 small spots with ctb-gel. And before you can blink with your eyes, the afternoon comes to an end. But much work still needed to be done!

still grab from Logic Pro, don't tell anyone the magic sauce for superior sound!

In the comfort of my home studio I started working on the audio. Cleaning up the tracks, compressing, limiting where needed and some fairly advanced automated equalization was done. A slight reverb was added to the vocal tracks. It took a while to get a good balance in the song. Mastering one songs like this takes about half a day.

branches

Next up was the intro for the video. I didn't want to make 'just another' animation in some cgi-software tool. I wanted something 'real'. During a nice walk in the woods I got the idea to make a small mobile and film this in close up. I collected a few branches and back home constructed the mobile.

printed with the laser on board

Filming this was easier said than done: we spend two evenings getting the movement right with this feather-light mobile!

setting up the mobile in the afternoon...

... and at night with 2 spots it looks like this. Watch the video for the final result.

Editing: the multicam function in FCP-X (my current video editing software) works like a charm and editing the multi angle clip was done quickly. With some fine tuning it was finished in a few hours.

FCP-X interface: clean, uncluttered and quick!

Up next I made a few tests with different color grading profiles before I choose the final look.

Some before and after shots:

before and after grading shot

before and after grading shot, I kept the grade subtle

And the music clip was finished. The video was rendered in 1080p. In the future I will publish videos in 4K resolution (that is 4x HD resolution), but at the moment my 4K workflow is still in development.

Enjoy watching this one, and don’t forget to share!

Erwin van Dijck is a video producer, cameraman and editor in the Netherlands. With many years experience in the video production field, he helps companies with producing their internet videos, promo’s, event impressions, client testimonials etc.

He is available for your next video project. For more info: contact!