"La Vie en Rose" - Phoenix J covering Edith Piaf (video)

This is a particularly stylish video in my estimation because ....

- The sepia tone / monochrome is a simple technique but it immediately sets a vibe without slapping you with a fish.

- She's done the prep.  She gets the look, sets the stage, and goes for it.

- She has not spent a lot of money but she has definitely given the video imagination.

It's just possible she did the entire thing by herself in setting up the camera, making sure everything is just so, then starting it before going over to sing.


In contrast, there are now one billion videos on YouTube of guys sitting in chairs playing acoustic guitars.  Dudes, Phoenix is tiny and she's killin' you (laughs).


Some recommendations:

- Use two cameras and, ideally, three.  Yah, that's expensive but it's not that terrible and music kit costs tons anyway.  It's all part of it.

- I've written before and will write further on syncing audio waveforms by inspecting them visually if there is interest to hear it.  When you have the waveforms synced, you can chop stuff from this video track or that one so the camera angle changes, depending on which camera clip you use.  This adds immensely to visual interest and it isn't easy but it's definitely worth it.  (The difficulty is not in learning but rather it's extremely time-consuming and fiddly.)

- Be exceptionally careful about tricky effects that modify the image in some way as you will pay dearly in render time.  Titles and such don't cost much that way but anything that jacks the video in some way will cost you (e.g. kaleidoscopic effects, trick prisms, etc, etc).  Consider well what Phoenix has done above.  She has wisely avoided trick effects and focused entirely on the content.


The areas in video processing that will Eat Your Lunch:

Render Time:  how long your video software needs to take an input video file and create the machine-readable / displayable image.

Transcoder Time:  how long it takes your Compressor software to take your 1280x720 video (or whatever resolution) and convert it down to, say, HD720 for YouTube.