As many of you know, I have been working since the beginning of the year on a project entitled Memoriam. Having wrapped the film more than a month ago. It’s extraordinary how long it’s taken even just to prepare for post production. This is my post post, my post about post.

Syncing

Ten weeks since we wrapped and quite frankly, I’m shocked it’s taken so long to sync all the footage. We thought we would be clever and use sync slates and an on-camera shotgun microphone. In my mind, there was no way this would be time consuming, I mean how hard is it to line up some sticks in editing right? Well I was so far from correct. Having a 22 minute film’s worth of footage is one thing. Having to sync it all, is something else entirely. I am so incredibly grateful for the sync slate. Quite frankly, without it, we still wouldn’t be synced, but it begs the question, how can independent, amateur filmmakers improve their production workflow to allow faster syncing in post?

In the industry, timecode is used to sync the sound and picture with multiple timecode “lock-it-boxes” feeding into each individual device to allow LTC (audio-based) timecode to be used to sync. These are expensive pieces of equipment, most lock-it-boxes start at well over $500 and you have to have more than one or there’s literally no point. There are some cheapies out there, most notably the new Tentacle-sync timecode boxes, but even those cost about $500 for a pair (that’s a huge saving over timecode buddy or ambient). So if the industry standard option isn’t available, what is? Well probably one of the best, inexpensive solutions is wireless audio. You can use wireless receivers and transmitters to send identical audio sources to the camera and audio recorder, but even this is incredibly inefficient, requires heaps of batteries and also, is still pretty costly.

I think the best solution is to have the DP always with headphones on and have your boom operator on a longer cable tethered to the camera. It’s not the most ideal situation, especially when shooting long distance to the subject but it means you can use PluralEyes or your editor’s built in audio sync functionality to sync in post.