Most impressive is the guys vocal chops and multi-instrument ability. Second most is he's got a Brian May guitar duplicate. I like that attention to detail.
"The video part was also challenging. I had Sony Vegas, which is great, but anytime you do a project with up to 12 separate videos on the screen at the same time, it can really chew up system resources on your computer. It was really hard to see what was going on while my computer was chugging along trying to keep up with everything. Although it was tough, doing the video was probably the most fun part. Video editing is a hobby of mine and it didn't feel like work.
Bounce:
With multitrack Tape it's simply playing numerous tracks with the Record Head (aka Sync Head), mixing them and re-recording them to fewer tracks on the same head on same tape. Thus say 12 tracks of block harmonies can be reduced to 1 or 2 tracks. The new tracks are in sync with the original, and the original tracks can be erased & used for something else. The only compromises are that it cannot be undone once the original tracks are erased, and the playback from the Record Head can be slightly less than optimal (compared to a Playback Head) on some machines. Engineer also had to plan ahead a little as generally bouncing to adjacent tracks caused problems (e.g. feedback because of tape and head bleed).
In the digital domain e.g. a DAW like Vegas, a bounce is much easier and achieved in a similar way with facilities like 'render to a new track'. Benefits in a DAW are that there's no need to erase the original 'tracks' (merely mute them) so a pre-mix can be done again if some change is desired, and that performance of the DAW can be sometimes increased by having less tracks playing during the final mixdown/render.
I have the original version from Queen downloaded as a 24 track project. It used to be available online and might still be on warez sites. It is interesting to see how the tracks were layed out, which ones were bounced and premixed and what stuff was recorded and not used in the final mix.
If you search you can find other songs in multi-track versions. Sgt Pepper's was online as the 4 tracks. and other queen songs.
Chris, I am just getting back into editing with Vegas pro. For doing this kind of heavy editing with 3 to 5 video tracks, what would be a good computer system to get? CPU, memory??
Well that's it for me, I'm giving up on all future music video projects. Not much could top that. (However, he could have used a camera with a manual focus, I noticed the auto-focus going in and out a few times)
Astonishingly good production from Ritchie,loved it.
Jerry, thanks also for drawing our attention to "the sequel". As a scientifically trained person, I realize how important it is to establish appropriate benchmarks so we can appraise the merit of an item. You have certainly established the quality of Ritchie's work.
I think you missed my point. The Richie Castellano video is truly amazing - both from a musical and video prospective.
The video I posted was, indeed "crap" from a musical and technical prospective. However, I enjoyed it almost as much as the Castellano video, albeit for an entirely different reason. It was about a family having fun. The kids and dad were truly enjoying themselves and the fun was infectious. Watch the eyes and the facial expressions on the little girl on the front seat. It's something I would have loved to have done with my kids when they were young (ahhh... maybe the grandkids!).