Murder, She Watched

Meghan loves her Murder, She Wrote. She might be the show's youngest living fan. Also, I absolutely adore her.

Murder, She Watched - Meghan Marvin Character Study from Samuel Hall on Vimeo.

I made this video for Philip Bloom's Weekend Challenge 2. The challenge was to do a character study using sync sound. I shot with my Canon 7D and recorded sound with a Zoom H4N. This was the first time I tried shooting sync sound with a DSLR and it wen't very well. It's actually somewhat freeing to take the sound away from the camera. I felt more free and light without being tethered to sound cables.

I edited this with Final Cut Pro and color-corrected with Adobe After Effects CS5. The sync process was quite easy, using FCP's "Merge Clips" feature (found in the Modify menu). It's a feature that doesn't seem to get much attention so I'll go over it here:

The easiest way I've found is to set your in-point on both your video and audio to a sync point, l like a clap-board or in my case Meghan clapping. Then, with both clips selected, Merge Clips. FCP will ask you how you want to sync, choose in-points. You'll then have a new synced reference clip in the browser, ready to use.

I doubt this is big news to anyone but I found it surprisingly easy and fun to play with.

Thanks to all who've watched, commented and liked the film. Special thanks to Philip Bloom for getting me off my ass to make something over the weekend :)