Any advice on clone videos?

[IsntChrisL]

I finished my first clone video today. I thought it was pretty funny and I would like to make more in the future. I was wondering if there were any good strategies for going about it though? I've got the layers stuff all figured out. My biggest question really revolves around timing and audio.

How do most people do it? I didn't know what to do so I recorded all of the dialogue separately first and played it while I was recording each part (in order to time the conversation correctly). The results were good for the most part, but there were a few audio glitches in the video because of it. And it took a lot of time to do all of that audio editing.

Besides using another person to read dialogue to you, does anyone have any advice on making this process easier?

 

[unknown_user0004]

I finished my first clone video today. I thought it was pretty funny and I would like to make more in the future. I was wondering if there were any good strategies for going about it though? I've got the layers stuff all figured out. My biggest question really revolves around timing and audio.

How do most people do it? I didn't know what to do so I recorded all of the dialogue separately first and played it while I was recording each part (in order to time the conversation correctly). The results were good for the most part, but there were a few audio glitches in the video because of it. And it took a lot of time to do all of that audio editing.

Besides using another person to read dialogue to you, does anyone have any advice on making this process easier?

It's a pain. I find it's usually more natural-sounding to record live (i.e. not lipsync), but that may be a matter of personal preference.

Probably the best results would be to use a click-track or cue track, and then dub the lines afterward. But that gets to be ridiculously time-consuming. That said, with a cue track, you're able to pre-record the dialog WITH some additional cues like "3...2..." etc, that won't make it into the final audio.

A few tips:

• Record MANY good takes, and try to vary the timing a bit, so you have options in post.
• If you shoot at 30fps, you have some flexibility to re-time the clips, so don't be nervous about doing that (you can get away with a *little* fudging even if you're recording at 24)
• Try to avoid long takes. YOU may feel like it's cheating to cut to close-ups, but it's not nearly as jarring for the audience. If you look at a ton of WheezyWaiter's stuff (he's kinda the king of clone-effects), he does relatively few long takes.
• Budget LOOOOTS of time

 

[IsntChrisL]

It's a pain. I find it's usually more natural-sounding to record live (i.e. not lipsync), but that may be a matter of personal preference.

Probably the best results would be to use a click-track or cue track, and then dub the lines afterward. But that gets to be ridiculously time-consuming. That said, with a cue track, you're able to pre-record the dialog WITH some additional cues like "3...2..." etc, that won't make it into the final audio.

A few tips:

• Record MANY good takes, and try to vary the timing a bit, so you have options in post.
• If you shoot at 30fps, you have some flexibility to re-time the clips, so don't be nervous about doing that (you can get away with a *little* fudging even if you're recording at 24)
• Try to avoid long takes. YOU may feel like it's cheating to cut to close-ups, but it's not nearly as jarring for the audience. If you look at a ton of WheezyWaiter's stuff (he's kinda the king of clone-effects), he does relatively few long takes.
• Budget LOOOOTS of time

Ha, I wouldn't dare trying to lip sync it. What I did was record the audio ahead of time so that when I filmed, I could play off of a live track. I film at ~30fps so I'm ok there. I did almost all of the things you mentioned EXCEPT the closeups. You're right, I kind of viewed it as cheating (but I really just like the idea of one impressive take).

I almost feel like closeups would make for MORE work. But I think it could be beneficial for more ambitious videos.

Thanks for taking the time to write all that. I was hoping to get an easy way out of hours of editing, but it looks like that might not be in the cards here. I'll check out WheezyWaiter's videos too.