I am talking Audio-Visual with Video integration here, mostly to fellow photographers / AV makers and to those of my peers who want to produce good Audio-Visuals. Do I have peers? I don’t think so — the serious photographers I know all have larger and more cameras than I will ever have. Fine with me, I am “travelling light”. How would you know a serious Photographer? No selfies!
Making a PIZZA with ready-made dough?! Did that once only, and that’s similar to taking other people’s images from the Internet – without checking CC or asking for permission – and make your AVs. If it’s impossible to check, the least AV – makers must do, give credit.
The music we usually borrow and of course we attribute our sources, don’t we?
Maybe one should try to get away from using complete CD tracks. In AVs we still experience sound crudely faded out at the end of the visuals, that’s just not acceptable.
I aim for more interesting, complicated and layered sound tracks, each tailored to a particular show.
My then local music friend (recording studio,) gave me a choice of 2 songs by JJ Cale, of which a Hermanus muso was recording his own cover versions. I could use his instrumentals with my words.
As I am not a trained lyrics writer this part of the show took me fairly long to do. A good method is counting the syllables of the original song, line by line, and writing your words accordingly. Time-consuming, but I don’t want to make AVs where you could just take any melody for your visuals.
Somebody had to sing my lyrics. The entertainer guy played hard to get. I tried a busker then, no go. Again, a lot of time wasted. Finally my music guy contacted a gospel singer – Zach. We did two takes and the song plus some words for the end were done.
That’s a year after starting the project.
Thinking up a variety of setting I tried several for each shot, fitting the words. For the final product I had a sequence to follow, e.g. rolling the dough comes after kneading, but sieving and mixing first.
For this short clip I did not have to listen to the beat for synchronising my movements as the music was ingrained in my head. That happens when you make involved AVs.
The video clip with the large clock face indicates the 15 minutes kneading the dough. “900 seconds…” fits smoother into the text than “15 minutes”. Both clips are very small, 250 and 400 KB.
I asked the singer about syntax and we changed some words slightly. I show the almost finished product at the beginning where the rhythm is just made for that sequence- decorating the dough. The end is a revision to round off the whole process, also repeating certain points, which might have gone too quickly or not noticed by viewers in detail, because the rhythm is fairly fast, 180 BPM.
Experimenting a lot throughout the series was time consuming, but good for learning. Olive oil directly on the flour looks dull, I even tried oil drops on top of the LEDs, but finally settled for oil on a hollowed brass ring.
Most of my special effects are not program-based, the first three credits I wrote in the Title Editor, but how to let them vanish? The shadow at the bottom of the roller helped a lot combined with carefully chosen dissolve times. The upper side was too bright.
Camera? My one and only is a compact type, Nikon Coolpix P 7700. Naturally I use tripods, an old one hangs permanently suspended in my studio / store-room, a home-made copy stand is indispensable for me, a spare camera shoe I mounted to a ceiling beam in the kitchen. A fully articulated camera monitor is essential, and a little remote control eases the work. If you look very closely you can see this in my first shot of grating the cheese.
I hate the question about the programme; usually this comes first after an AV show. So I tell you now: It’s the German “m.objects” by Steffen Richter. It works with multiple tracks and that suits me, because I was used to that track-based program for slide-AV: One track per analogue projector; if you needed more tracks for complicated programming, then you had to get more projectors.
My picture to video ratio for this AV is a bit more than one third video, 120 files all together including sound. The projection version I saved as 1920x 1080 pix. size 165 MB. The monitor version is much smaller.
Timing was important on certain shots, my tomatoes were plentiful and at their prime in mid-summer. My favourite ones are Oxheart – in the center. I also tried Romans – on the right.
To get all the planned shots, I made about six Pizzas , all of them we enjoyed. 
Photographically this type of AV is not demanding. You take all your photos at home and in the garden – at least in the neighbourhood. No travelling time and expense, because you need better pictures of a landscape in certain light and weather conditions in a particular region. My idea of “travelling light” is not just to do with photographic equipment, my footprint should also be light.
Coming back to my heading: “ AV – Video ”. The digital age allows us to incorporate video with ease, so it seems. What I see on YouTube and other channels is to 70% gruesome – we need a lot of education here.
Some photo-clubs and Audio – Visual competitions want to restrict you to a percentage of video within you AV production, really!
My standpoint is: If you need Video in your Audio – Visual, use as much as necessary. Reserve stills for static objects. When digital came to force out traditional slides, just about everybody let those stills turn and twist like crazy on the screen. And ZOOM! Everything has to be zoomed without rhyme or reason – dreadful. I hope that those special effects will lose their appeal eventually and Audio – Visual with or without Video is getting better amongst discerning amateur photographers.
Thomas, first version finished in 2014, last update June 2018
