Sociodelic Live Lounge Post-Production

Following our live lounge recording session with project artist Euan, accompanied in session by Nzanzu also doing an acoustic live lounge set, there is a process of post-production needing to be undertaken to reach the final result.

With the live-lounge recording session going to plan smoothly with the help of business liaison Tioma and film team Dan & Darris, we finished with 3 tracks (1 by Euan , 2 by Nzanzu) worth of audio and video stems.

To begin the mixing, in our team between myself and Das we split the mixing workload to increase our productivity and efficiency. I myself mixed the 2 tracks by Nzanzu, “Pot of Gold” and “Shots on Film”, while Das mixed Euan’s track “Brilliant Mistake Machine”.
The mixing process was fairly straightforward with the recordings consisting of just a vocal mic, two on the acoustic and two room mics. For overall sonics and sound we agreed on an aesthetic which was warm and full, which was appropriate with the session being done on a characteristically warm desk (Neve), we would keep effects to a minimum with subtle reverbs, and keep focus on the authenticity of the artist and their sound by aiming to enhance the sound rather than transforming it.

Once we’d agreed on an approach, the mixing sessions were individually carried out, these went successfully with our original vision reached with a consistency between the tracks while still accounting for the differentiation of aesthetic intrinsic to each track.
Once the mixing was complete, there was also the job of video editing which I undertook myself, utilising video editing software I brought firstly the video stems for each track / take from both cameras into the session, lined them up with the beginning clap cue.

Once lined up, I then went through and picked which camera angle would be used at which segment of the track whilst keeping in mind movements of either the artist or the arrangement to help prompt the transitions to smooth them, with the transitioned back and forth between shots done I then implemented some creative use of cropping, opacity and crossfades to create a cerebral and evolving video arrangement which maintained a focus on the artist in sections whilst then still aiming to curate a dissociating visual to sink the viewer into focusing on the music more so than the visual accompaniment. Utilising the crop and opacity led to some nice double layered shot sections which created enough variance for the visual, as going into it with only the two camera angles proved a tough task to utilise in creating enough variation, but these tools employed helped with that to create an interesting visual.

Once the video editing was done on each of the three videos, utilising the beginning clap cue again I then synced the mixed audio to the video in the video editor, whilst still keeping some of the session background noise in the beginning and end to create a less isolated overall sound to the piece. As without it was somewhat claustrophobic jumping straight into the track, and given the welcoming lounge aesthetic we’d gone for we wanted the audience to view a more intimate session and this along with leaving some visual elements in of the takes before and after tracking helped very much to create this.

To finalise the audio/visual, I added some titles at the beginning with the series name centre focused, Sociodelic Live Lounge, following with a side focused artist and track name. Along with this there was also the outro segment fading to black with thanks for watching the title.
Overall I am very happy with the outcome of this session, and as a team we are very excited to get many more underway.