We try to look at the local Craigslist most days because sometimes there are people looking for our services. One such posting wanted a videographer to record a music video for posting on YouTube. We sent a quote and waited. No our experience is that 80% of such quotes never receive a reply but in this case we were accepted and agreed a date for the shoot.

As we drove there we realized that the short e-mail exchange setting up the event did not go into much detail of what we were going to video. As you will see it turned out to be different then we imagined, no would be band or rock group but a simple classical piece.

There were challenges; it has been a long time since I had to record a classical piece mixing the feed from a piano and vocal microphone. I even had to consult the experts to see how best to balance the piano to the solo.

The lighting was anything but optimal, light was streaming through the windows which had no dark shades and there was no way we could move the grand piano! So we made the most of what we had, using one fixed camera as the long-shot and a second for the close in head-shots. We had interruptions during the recording when the gardeners started cutting the grass but did succeed in recording six separate pieces.

We spent some time in post production mixing the music and video to produce a DVD of the recital as well as the required files for upload to YouTube.