On Fixing Guitars And Making Videos

This week I shot and edited my first video. OK, I’ve shot home videos and the odd time-lapse over the years. I even helped make some BETA & VHS demo music videos back in the 80s. But, this is my first go at video with a dSLR and editing in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Making The Video

For this video, I put the D800e on a tripod, then set up two small soft boxes with continuous lights, one overhead, one to the side at a 45 degree angle to the camera. I set the camera up with what looked like a good, shallow depth of field composition and hit record.

As you can tell, I’m taking a trial and error approach to this.

Once the clips were shot, I then settled into watching a lynda.com video on editing with Adobe Premier Pro, imported the files and set about editing them. I didn’t do a lot to the video, but some colour correction and subtle transitions between each edit helped a lot.

For the audio, I used the D800e’s built in mic workshop for the ambient sounds in the workshop. The performance in the final scene (and the background music in the opening sequence) were recorded using a Neumann M82 mic, direct into a UAD Apollo Quad, with Helios EQ and dbx160 plugins. These are the first guitar recordings done in my new Tokyo studio.

On Fixing Guitars

I normally give every guitar a little clean and adjustment when changing strings. This is a quick and simple 5-10 minute job. However, twice a year (January and August) I spend more time on every instrument, checking them in more detail and making repairs or modifications.

It’s something I love to do. For a while, during my teens, I even thought about taking up luthiery (building and repairing guitars) as a trade. When you take the time to do it well, guitar maintenance can be a very rewarding job; bringing new life to tired old instruments, or keeping the best instruments in top shape.

On The Bench

This is the first of series of videos I plan to make 2014. I’m going to start with the set up and service of each of my guitars then see where it goes from there. If there’s something you’d like to see then please, let me know.

Anyway, here’s the video. Enjoy.