It’s a simple effect, but a reminder that extending onto multiple screens — any multiple screens, really — can be a good time. Jeff Soto/iamnotrobot sends along his friends Love and Logic and Chris Perino (Drive By) covering Lady Gaga. Each of the four iPhones is one take, no cuts, and the four are synced together on playback. The only catch is, audio isn’t synced — that’s what I’d love to see next, audio coming out of four devices in a cappella fashion. Love and Logic’s Paul Canetti explains the technique:
The audio is overdubbed. It’s a studio recording (done in our home studio) using Logic Pro. And the auto-tune you hear is the built-in pitch correction plug-in in Logic Pro 9. Just like a traditional music video, the audio was pre-recorded. (however the phones vibrating at the end– that’s live audio!)
The four iPhones were in sync the old-fashioned way, pressing play on the count of 4!!! We did a lot a lot a lot of takes/false-starts until it worked perfectly, and then we let it run. We shot the four phones on a lightbox (like for looking at photo negatives).
Each of the four screens was shot individually as a long one-shot continuous video set to the music. When the screen goes dark, we are just literally switching off the power-strip with the lights in it. No cuts in any of the videos.
As I assemble a collection of various screens from various generations of hardware, I may have to put them all together into a little screen chorus — across many, many platforms, of course. (DS? PSP? Ancient Windows Mobile?)
I’m sure some readers have done similar things, so feel free to pipe up.
Side note: look, it’s a Lady Gaga video without horrific product placement / “brand integration.” (I will say, though, it’s effective: now the next time I’m going to poison someone, I’m totally adding Miracle Whip to their sandwich, and I hear Virgin Mobile is the carrier you want if you’re in an all-women’s prison.) Sorry, couldn’t resist – and I love the Gaga.