What’s VJing?

What do you need?

Hardware

Vital Hardware:

Computer – Preferably a fast one. Generally a laptop. Both PC and Mac machines can be used for VJing. Both have strengths and weaknesses, and certain software is only available for one or the other.

Important: Your computer should be able to have a secondary display attached. Most clubs and venues accept Composite video, some S-Video, and a few will have VGA. Not many mixers will accept VGA, DVI or HDMI, so you’ll generally be outputting your final mix as quite low resolution, analog video. New Macbook Pros have trouble with this, so do plenty of research before you take the plunge.

Midi Controller – Keyboard, Pad controller, DJ style controller. Just about anything will work, and is better than a mouse.

Some nice ones include: Behringer BCR2000 (lots of knobs) and BCD3000 (DJ-Style). Numark NuVJ, iPhone with TouchOSC, Mrmr etc.

Jaymis wrote an article in 2006 on Choosing a Midi Controller for VJing, and there’s more on CreateDigitalMotion.

Optional Hardware:

External Hard Drive: One of the main “forms” of VJing uses loops, or video clips. Most computers don’t deal so well with having lots of video clips played from the main operating system drive, so an external hard drive will let you play back higher resolution clips, with better framerates.

Projector: These days more clubs and venues will have their own in-house projection, so a projector is less of a necessity. You can practice with a normal TV. If you’re playing a gig, make sure you find out what connectors the in-house video has.

Scan Converter: As some computers don’t output analogue video, and different venues accept different video signals, a cheap scan converter is an important part of your kit if you’re playing lots of shows in different places.

Video Mixer:

Software

For this workshop we’re using Resolume Avenue, as it’s cross-platform and

Codecs – Explain.

Useful Links

http://createdigitalmotion.com

VJ Zoo’s “Painting With Light”: http://vjzoo.com/ev2006a.htm

Free video clips at Archive.org

cowper – The Kite Song – live at The Edge – 30th April 2010 from Jaymis on Vimeo.

cowper – Capulet – Live at The Edge – 30th April 2010 from Jaymis on Vimeo.

The shoot used three of the Edge’s little Sony HD cameras, and were operated by Kristy from 4ZZZ and other cool kids who happened to be in the Auditorium.

We’ve got quite an archive of performance footage building up, so if anyone would like to get some experience editing multi-camera shoots, you should get in touch with me.

The audio from this performance was recorded straight from the mixing desk to hard drive, and all four tracks can be downloaded for free from Cowper on Bandcamp.

Rowley and I have two Music+Visuals gigs coming up this weekend, first playing in one of The Edge’s window bays as part of the Unconvention lunchtime showcase on Saturday, then the Unconvention Afterparty at The JOYnt on Sunday immediately after Unconvention wraps up.

I’ll also be providing visuals for the Unconvention All Ages Showcase on Saturday night. Big weekend! Hope to see you there.

As an editor, one of the most common requests I get is “Can you edit the footage I shot at my show?” So last year I wrote a post on CreateDigitalMotion.com with some tips for artists documenting their shows:

Shooting Video For Gigs: Take That Camera Close and Make It Look Like Stuff Happened

I’m in the middle of editing a video that combines an artist interview with event footage. The supplied raw material is 10 minutes of interview footage and 45 minutes of the event, shot from a single camera. From that footage I was able to extract 5 minutes of usable interview, but just 40 seconds of the gig. It’s not that the gig video was badly shot, it was just homogenous. Medium-long shot of people dancing. Medium shot of the DJ. Over the shoulder shot of the DJ. Medium shot of girls dancing. Repeat.

This is sad, because a single camera and half an hour is plenty of time to capture a dynamic performance. The secret sauce? Close ups.

Segue – Reset (Live at Big Day Out) from Jaymis on Vimeo.
I shot this video for my friends/collaborators Segue at last year’s Big Day Out. Two days before the show, the festival organizers told us that we wouldn’t be able to do our own visuals for the set, so it was decided that I’d be camera guy instead, with an eye to getting footage for a live or studio video. I’m not much of a videographer – I keep forgetting whether clockwise zooms in or out – but I’ve spent a lot of time editing video, so I’m generally able to cover dodgy shooting with edits.

For that to work however, continuity needs to be maintained. In the above video, I’ve taken great care to ensure that continuity of action is held between cuts. If there’s a medium shot of an artist drinking water, or putting on his headphones, then the following closeup will show him putting down the bottle, or mixing with headphones in place. The footage may have been cut from 20 minutes earlier in the set, but because I got plenty of closeup footage, there’s no need for continuity to be kept across the entire stage, just on the detail that’s in focus.

This was a very time-consuming process, taking about 9 hours to turn 50 minutes of footage into a 7 minute edit. To show the band why it took so long and how I achieved the final result, I created a two-up video, which displays the final edit on top, and the live camera feed below. I’d previously kept this edit private, to maintain the mystery for the band, but I think it’s worth revealing to show what’s possible if you give yourself plenty of shot variation to play with:

Segue – Reset (Live at BDO Two-up Edit) from Jaymis on Vimeo.

Obviously the setting really helps here – thousands of kids jumping around can’t help but be exciting – but even if the source footage isn’t epic, with your non-linear editor and enough closeups, you can make it look that way.

A VJ, or Video Jockey, is an artist who performs with video. It’s like a mixture of video editing, digital art, and playing computer games on stage.

Jaymis has been a VJ for over 10 years, has played all around Australia & Europe, and spent a year touring Aus as the “Visualist” member of Bobby Flynn and the Omega Three.

His software of choice is Resolume, which now works on both PCs and Macs, so we’re able to run a workshop where everyone can use the same software, together!

What you’ll learn:

This workshop will cover the basics of VJing – how digital video works, how VJing software works, how to select, prepare and perform with video clips, and a little on how to work with a laptop, midi controller and projector for live performance.

What you’ll need:

Yourself, and optionally: some video clips you’d like to work with.

I’m currently editing some video of a gig and interview, taken at an album launch party here in Brisbane. The promoter supplied me with a DVD containing about 10 minutes of interview, and about 45 minutes of “party” footage. If you’re in to documenting your work you’ve probably shot some just like it yourself: Crowd dancing. Shot of the artist. Over the shoulder of the artist tweaking his Lemur. Cute girls dancing. Repeat.

Of that 45 minutes of party action, I was able to extract only about 40 seconds of usable footage. It wasn’t badly shot, just homogenous. There was no shot variation, so it wasn’t interesting to watch, and there was no way to edit for continuity, to give an overall, consistent feel for what was going on.

The missing ingredient, which would allow me as an editor to glue it all together, was closeups.

Last year my collaborators Segue had a high profile gig at the Big Day Out. At the last minute the festival organizers said we couldn’t provide our own visuals, so I took my camera along instead, with a view to shooting footage which could be used for a live video. As there was just a single camera, I tried to cover as much ground as possible, shooting from the front and back of the stage, out in the audience, getting wide shots of the crowd and zooming up close on details of the rig and artists. I’m not a very good cameraman, but I knew that with enough details, enough cutaways, enough different shots, I’d be able to tie everything together at the end.

Segue – Reset (Live at Big Day Out 2008 Two-up Edit) from Jaymis on Vimeo.

Getting the footage back to my studio, I took over 9 hours to edit that 45 minutes of footage into a single 7 minute live video. At the time the band were wondering why it was such an intensive job, so I exported a two-up edit of the video to show them how I was able to use closeups, crowd shots, and details to take that single-camera shoot and make it look like there had been a team of ninja cameramen swarming the stage.

The two-up edit shows the final mix on top, and the original continuous camera feed underneath.

This edit took so long because I was very careful with the continuity of shots. If I was cutting from a wide shot of an artist drinking, the following closeup should show him putting the bottle back down. If he had headphones on, then subsequent shots should have them as well. It didn’t matter if those clips were dragged in from 20 minutes earlier in the set, because close shots don’t show enough of the stage detail for the viewer’s brain to realise that things are happening out of order.

I’m sure many CDMu readers have been lumped with the task of capturing video of your own performances, or those of your peers. You may have edited the video yourself, or given it to a handy visualist to have a crack. Even if you have someone else shooting video of your show, it’s worth giving them some direction on what you’d like to to see. Hence:

Jaymis’ Tips for Great, Editor-Friendly Gig Shooting

Leave the camera(s) running constantly: Even if there’s only one, you won’t miss anything. If there’s more than one camera, continuous tape makes multi-camera editing exponentially easier.
Closeups are your friends: Close, detail shots allow you to tie disparate pieces of footage together and to cover camera moves. They also add variety, and show some intimate details of what’s happening on stage. Closeups of the crowd and venue are also great for adding context, without having the distraction of a full human body unrelated to the action.
Keep the camera moving: If you just want to document your set for posterity, having it up the back on a tripod is fine. But if you want to produce some thing visually interesting, then get that camera moving around the space. Remember to hold it still in between moves so you don’t get stabbed by your editor. Take your cues for the music. Move a couple of beats, hold focus for a phrase. Make your moves in between sections of music. Wide shots for builds, close shots in the middle of a section.
Don’t be scared of manual focus: Out of focus shots can be a great transition device. For fast, exciting music, hunting focus reinforces the frenetic nature of the action.

All of the other standard photography rules apply of course, so find someone to tell you about white balance, aperture, shutter speed, exposure etc. If you stuff those up though, there’s a lot which can be done in the edit, but we can’t make up interesting footage in post-production. That has to happen on the night.

If you’d like to learn how to take interesting footage and turn it in to an interesting video, come along to the Video101 workshops I’m running at The Edge!

2–6pm Sunday 23 May and Friday 9 July 2010 NEW DATE!
Facilitator: Jaymis Loveday
Cost: FREE
Book: email The Edge

Video is super hot right now. Cheap video cameras, video editing software, and the internet have combined to level the playing field for production and distribution. All you need to get your video out to the world is a creative idea, a camera, a computer and a little bit of technical knowledge.

Jaymis has a lot of technical knowledge, so he’s going to compress it down to the bare essentials – enough information for you to learn to shoot, edit, produce and publish your own video in four hours!

This workshop will benefit performers, musicians, writers, crafters, speakers, businesses, artists… anyone who creates something which can be seen with the eyes and heard by the ears.

What you’ll need:

If you have your camera which can shoot video, bring that along. “Point and shoot” digital cameras (the ones which are usually used for taking photos) are ideal. If you have your own tripod and laptop for editing, that would also be useful. If you don’t have any gear, you can borrow a camera from The Edge for the afternoon, but you’ll get much more out of the workshop if you can work on your own gear.

You should also come along with an idea, something you’d like to show the world. If you’re a musician or a performer, have a song, poem or piece ready to perform (bring an instrument or costume if required). If you’re an artist or creator, bring along some of your work to show and talk about.

What you’ll achieve:

This workshop is all about video, so let’s have some examples of what Jaymis’ “Cheap, Fast, Effective” video production philosophy has achieved in the past.

Cowper – Avid Reader Tour:

The Gig:

Rowley Cowper had planned an Australian East Coast tour in which he played music in bookstores, in exchange for books. He wanted to share his touring experiences and performances with the world, so the morning he left on tour, Jaymis gave him a quick “Video 101″ workshop, and sent him on his way.

5000km (Cowper Avid Reader Tour) from Cowper on Vimeo.

The Gear:

Rowley had a Canon IXUS point-and-shoot camera (About $400) a minidisc to record his music, and a tiny compact Asus EEE laptop for editing ($300).

The Videos:

During the two week tour he produced 6 videos – 3 live performances, 2 video blogs, and 1 performance of another musician he met along the way:

The one thing The Edge doesn’t have so far is people editing footage to show what’s going on! I hope to remedy that in the coming weeks, but right now a little of this gap has been filled by Kyle McLean, who was commissioned to put together a projection mapping installation for the opening event. The budget wouldn’t stretch to provide a white, projection-friendly venue though, so he augmented the black, steel sculpture towering over The Edge building.

Augmented Sculpture @ The Edge opening from Kyle McLean on Vimeo.

Kyle works in VVVV, and it’s fantastic to watch him patch a system together live. The video was shot on a Canon 5D MKII, which dealt beautifully with the relatively low light environment.

4–6pm Wednesday 12 May and 9 June 2010
Who: Jaymis Loveday
What: Workshop on how to use free software WordPress
Cost: FREE
Booking: book.it@edgeqld.org.au

WordPress is a popular blogging software and Content Management System, used to maintain millions of websites around the world—including The Edge.

In this workshop, you will learn how to configure, write, and administer your own blog using WordPress.com, the free blog hosting platform. We will also cover topics such as purchasing your own domain name, using Google Apps for email, writing for the web, and new-blogger etiquette.

As far as I’m concerned, OK Go are winning at internet video. From the self-conscious genius of A Million Ways, iterating through Here It Goes Again, stopping at the artistically hip Do What You Want, before blasting through CDMo favorite WTF? to the new hotness of This Too Shall Pass, which they’ve actually released two completely distinct single-shot videos for this year!

Their work has run the gamut from ridiculously simple and cheap, to equally ridiculously complex and expensive. Throughout this progression, they’ve produced work which is varied, yet instantly recognizable. The productions maintain a thread of simple, effective, creative concepts, and each has been appropriate to the band’s available resources.

I think this is the essence of creativity, and what makes “indie” production so compelling. It’s not sustainable to continuously produce work which strains your budget or resources, so we all generally work with a set of constraints built around what we have available. Record labels have ready access to film studios with white walls and bright lights, so a frightening majority of label-released videos follow a sadly predictable path of “something something story something, and then the band mimes along in a white-walled studio with bright lights”.

OK Go are on a label (Capitol/EMI), but they’ve definitely managed to maintain the level of control required to call the shots, and decide where their budgets should be spent. Gizmodo just posted an interview which purports to “tell the secrets of the band’s geeky videos”. I didn’t really discover any production secrets, but the band’s attitude towards creativity, and  record label constraints is quite interesting:

Our label, bless their moronic hearts, was given our record nine months ago. It kept getting pushed back. We basically wound up with several months of our lives to just get in trouble. If we’d had to go into promo land and get on tour we wouldn’t have time to do this kind of stuff. Basically I got home when the record was done and wrote down my dream list of videos. This whole project started with a two-paragraph description that I put down online as a job post, essentially. I asked for two creative engineers, because I figured that’s about what it would take. Two engineers, and a couple of months. It ended up being more like 60 engineers, and five months of work.
[from Q&A: OK Go's Lead Singer Tells Us Secrets of the Band's Geeky Videos]

For me, “wrote down my dream list of videos” is the key phrase here. None of OK Go’s clips are contrived or cynical attempts to “go viral”. They obviously love the medium, they love creating new things, monkeying around on treadmills, making the world’s biggest tv-smashing, paint-firing machine. They’re obviously having a blast while they’re doing it, and if you love what you’re doing, your audience can’t help but love it too.

OK Go – WTF? from OK Go on Vimeo.

When WTF was released, I wrote about “originality”, and the concept of making creative work from well-understood building blocks.

As long as you produce something which has personality, and creates an emotional connection with your audience, then I think anyone who accuses you of being “unoriginal” is missing the point.

The Rube Goldberg Device is the ultimate collection of “well understood building blocks”, and a beautiful metaphor for the art of the visualist. We’re taking the objects we have ready access to, building new things to interface them together, and making something amazing.

Update: Just to hit home on the topic of record labels not understanding truly fresh, creative work, Techdirt are reporting that OK Go have left EMI and started their own label, after repeated issues with the label turning off embeds and generally acting like soulless fatcats who don’t at all understand how viral culture works.

[Originally posted by Jaymis on CreateDigitalMotion]

Now that the craziness of The Launch has passed, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce myself, and tell you about what I actually do. You may have seen me referred to as a visualist, but as this term is understood almost exclusively by people who are, themselves, visualists, this probably bears some explanation.

What is a VJ?

Apparently, the term VJ or “Video Jockey” was coined in the 80s, to describe someone who performed with moving images on screens. Back in the 60s (and before) this would involve film and slide projectors, overhead transparencies, and oil projection. Over time, video gear became cheaper, so the term encompassed people who worked with analogue video (VHS and Betacam), live video feeds, CRT screens, DVD players, and eventually laptops and data projectors. By the early 2000s, laptop computers became fast enough to display and mix multiple layers of video, and hard drives became cheap enough to for a performer to carry many thousands of video clips around in a backpack. Data projectors also underwent a drastic drop in price. The stage was set for a VJ explosion, and explode we did. In the last decade, VJing has progressed from a relatively tiny subset of event production, to an integral part of just about any live performance or club. Computer VJ programs now number in their hundreds, we have our own, custom hardware,  and there are many different “forms” and styles of VJing. VJ also became the pop-culture term for someone who presents music videos on TV. We needed our own nomenclature.

Enter The Visualist

In 2006 I founded CreateDigitalMotion.com with Peter Kirn, an electronic musician and video artist from New York. The site covered the gamut of live video performance, video production, animation, visual programming, music videos, video hardware hacking and more. We’d been watching the art form progress and change around the world, and started to use the term “visualist” to describe someone who was a rounded video performer, who shot, animated and programmed their own source material, created and customized their own hardware setups, and then performed live, with or without a band, DJ or source of music. For us, a “VJ” now refers to a performer who uses VJ software (or hardware video players) to mix pre-created video loops and provide visual backing for a performance, whereas a Visualist is someone who is much more deeply intertwined with the process of creation, production and performance.

What is a Jaymis?

Hi. I’m Jaymis. I’m a visualist (everyone on the same page now?). My main proposed activity while I’m here at The Edge is to help other artists become visualists. I’ll be collaborating with fellow catalyst Andrew Gibbs, and putting on workshops designed to take you from Zero to Visualist in 6 months. So you’ll learn: How to shoot and edit digital video, how to animate using a computer, how to perform live using VJ software, how to design and implement a system for live video production and streaming, and more!

Outside of the workshops, catalysts are available to collaborate and work with other artists. So to give you an idea of whether you’d like to get together and be all Catalysed, here’s some examples of my work:

Studio Music Videos

Edward Guglielmino – Fail With Me (Warning: Some naughty words feature in this song)

Edward Guglielmino – Fail With Me from Jaymis on Vimeo.

Cowper – Berlin Four Two

Cowper – Berlin Four Two from Jaymis on Vimeo.

Edward Guglielmino – Settle Down With Me (Director’s Cut)

Edward Guglielmino – Settle Down With Me (Director’s Cut) from Jaymis on Vimeo.

Live Music Video

Flamingo Crash – Sister Sister

Flamingo Crash – Sister Sister from Jaymis on Vimeo.

Cowper – The Kite Song

Cowper – The Kite Song (Live) from Jaymis on Vimeo.

Live Event Vision and Streaming

Hungry Kids of Hungary – Scattered Diamonds (Live)

Hungry Kids of Hungary – Scattered Diamonds from Herovision on Vimeo.

Edward Guglielmino – Crushed by a Late Night Dream (Live)

Edward Guglielmino – Crushed by a Late Night Dream (Live) from Jaymis on Vimeo.

Animation

Stencil Cut and Spray

Tree Stencil Cut and Spray Timelapse – Draft from Jaymis on Vimeo.

The Colour Chase

The Colour Chase from Jaymis on Vimeo.

There’s plenty more to be found on Vimeo. If you’d like to ask any questions or to organize a meeting, please get in touch!

This is a particularly timely piece of repurposing though, with the triumphant Edge Launch last Friday night, and loud, shouty bands like DZ playing, I was a little concerned that we weren’t providing hearing protection. Not that this is necessarily the responsibility of the venue, but I think it’s something that caring Places Of Noise should do, and I’ll be talking to our staff about getting a supply of cheap disposable ‘plugs for patrons of our shows.

If, however, you’re someone who sees a lot of gigs, cares about how those gigs sound, or who cares about not disposing of things which don’t necessarily need to be thrown away, then you should invest in a slightly more permanent solution. Enter the Etymotics ER-20 High Fidelity earplugs.

As a VJ and live performer, I’ve spent lots of time on stages and in clubs, and always worn hearing protection. Usually the disposable foam ones. They protect your ears well, but provide an uneven attenuation of sound, removing too much high-end. In non-audio-geek terms, this makes the music sound muffled, like it’s coming from the next room, or it’s being played through some speakers which are buried in blankets.

Higher quality earplugs have a more even attenuation, which makes the waves delivered to your ears sound much more natural. I’ve actually found that using them makes loud gigs sound even better than barebacking. When exposed to a loud sound, your stapedius reflex slightly closes your inner ear. This makes things sound different, and it’s why your hearing is muffled after a loud show, but it’s not enough to protect you from permanent hearing damage.

The ER-20s aren’t quite as comfortable as the soft, squishy ones, but the better sound more than makes up for this, and it protects the world from soft, squishy landfill. I actually had a hearing test done on Tuesday morning, less than 12 hours after seeing Phoenix at the Entertainment Centre. It was an extremely loud gig, yet my test results were all well within the normal range.

So. Hearing protection = compulsory. Higher quality hearing protection = lovely. If you’d like to know more on the subject, my original post on CreateDigitalMusic has loads of comments from musicians and performers around the world, both heaping love on Good Earplugs, and lamenting the fact that they didn’t know about them until Too Late.

If you’d like to get some of your own, you can order them for AU$35 (inc. delivery) from Headphonic in Australia.