My group Los Sugar Kings is always looking for ways to offer more content to our current and future fan base and decided to make some web videos of a recent live performance.  We wanted to avoid putting out the typical low quality videos you see on the web, the ones with poor video and audio. After all, we’re promoting our live show and want it to be the best possible representation of what we do. Generally, something like this can cost in the thousands, and that’s on the low end. Working with a smaller budget we had to find creative ways to get it done and that’s just we did. This was our second live video project and we learned so much along the way. In this post I’ll show you how we did it and how you can too.

Here’s what you’ll need

1. A well rehearsed band that’s fun to see and hear.

2. A gig in a live venue that will allow you to film. If they have a decent house mixing board and some lights that’s a plus but not a deal breaker.

3. Friends or fans that you can recruit to help out and lend a couple of DV cams.

4. Some audio and video editing software. Doesn’t have to be pro studio stuff, most consumer software solutions can handle the task. There are even some free options out there.

5. Time. Post production will take many hours if you want good results. But it will be worth it.

For expenses, if you’ve already got some software, you might need to pick up some DV tapes and some extra cables for the audio recording.

Since this will turn into a very long post, I have divided it up into five posts. Follow the links below.

1. Capturing audio

2. Capturing Video

3. Post production – Audio

4. Post production – Video

5. Delivery