The Project: Extreme Sailing, by definition, is any type of sailing that combines competition, strong wind and waves, the latest technology and pushing man and machine to the limits. We were asked by an association of sailing enthusiasts to help them put together a 4 part video series that shows off and promotes the sport. The 4 parts are:
Xtreme Cloth: Sailing 2017
- Part 1: Foils (boats that ride on Wing-foils)
- Part 2: One-Designs (boats of a similar class racing) feat. Rio Olympic racing
- Part 3: The Ocean Racers (long haul racing with sponsors like Rolex)
- Part 4: Tall Ships (The big and mighty ships of the line)
Part 1: The Foils. This 4 minute video highlights 3 major innovations in sailing technology: The International Moth Class, the Hydrofoil Board Sailing and the America Cup cat boats.
Style: Any extreme sport video needs to score EDM (Electronic Dance Music) Rock orchestra film scoring and in the case of this being a water / beach oriented sport...some Latin EDM...specifically Soca / Dancehall. The challenge is to combine authentic grooves, production sounds, beat match loops and samples as well as full scoring with a rock section. Assemble the scores with a lot of synced edits (requires running the video in your DAW) and know what is the latest "gimmicks" that is currently found in EDM styles. So lets take a look at the end result, then I'll talk about the production and storyboard.
Go full screen and turn it up
| ELEMENT | TECHNOLOGY | VERSION |
|---|---|---|
| DAW: Digital Audio Workstation | Sonar Platinum 64 bit | 2017.08 |
| Computer | PC / WIN 7 / Dual Xeon 6 Core / 64 Gig DDR3 / GeForce GTX 1050 Ti | |
| Sample VST | Kontakt 5, East West Ministry of Rock 2, Play, Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2, Session Drummer 2 | |
| Dimension Pro, Prime Loops (Guitar Hacks), Loopmasters, Steve Slate Drums | ||
| Processing VST | V-Vocal vocal processor, Nomad Blue Box FX's, WAVES Mercury Bundle, Sony elastique timestretching | |
| Cakewalk | ||
| Live Vocal / Moth | Nancy Roché "Millennial Whoop" processed using flat ambients in V-Vocal | |
| Video Software | Camtasia 9. Used for final synced assembly for output to mp4 / 1080p / H.264 AVC |
The Process:
- The client sent me via dropbox a collection of raw video they aquired along with a roughly edited video for my reference
- I wrote a storyboard off the rough edit and loaded the raw footage into Camtasia and rebuilt the edits as well as created the opening and transition video pieces
- I smoothed out all the transitions and cleaned up the pieces, adding any more exciting footage
- Once finished, I rendered a low res version to load into my DAW. Low res (still looks great) so while I'm using a ton of resources for the audio tracks, the video plays back flawlessly. Basic render settings for the project version: 1280 x 720 (720p) | 24FPS | 2000bps | H.264 / AVC fixed rate
- I began by inserting markers at every major video transition so I could get an idea of TRT for each segment
- I dragged some EDM loops in using Beatscape as well as my own library that is warehoused under C:\cakewalk content\edm_new\
- Once I got the right feel and energy and edited the music to match certain hits in the scenes, I started replacing (or adding to) the basic sample loops
- Editing: I love chopping up loops and mashing them together. Then add hits of FX's to make the transition sound real solid
- Now for the live performances: My partner Nancy Roché performed several versions on a "Millennial Whoop" and I processed her vocal with V-Vocal and removed all formant in order to get the classic "robotic" effect.
- Further loop stripping and quick cuts along with VST module overdubs and then mix and mastering each track, I saved the audio to a stereo mp3.
- Going back to Camtasia 9, I imported the audio file into the project and made any last minute sync adjustments and / or musical adjustments
- After rendering it out as a 1080p mp4 file, I sent the video back to the client for approval. They accepted the first one! Moving on to Part 2!
