How to prepare and make a crowd movie about music from around the world

At 14:00 Moscow time in the world a lot of events take place at once and many sounds sound. From these sounds you can collect music. And after a dozen “impossible”, we still decided that such a video could be filmed.

The work was carried out in 17 countries at once, the director physically was only on one film set, and the teams around the globe are 80 ordinary people who were found thanks to social networks.
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Below in the post about how we searched for different sounds that sounded at the same time, reduced them to music, received refusals from composers, found people all over the world for crowd filming, set tasks for them, fought off safeguards, collected everything as a result into one video and did that was considered almost impossible before.

The initial task was to make advertising convenient roaming. MFIVE suggested the concept that people can call up by phone and transmit sound signals from different places, which will be combined into a melody.

The main difficulty of the realization of the idea was that it was extremely difficult, firstly, to find suitable musical places around the world, secondly, to make music out of sounds, and thirdly, in fact, to remove it - and with all this, it’s not in the astronomical budget. , immediately and without options excluding the appearance of film crews in 17 countries in one day.

Work began with a search for sounds. Colleagues began to search on the Internet, directories, encyclopedias, friends, acquaintances, even went to travel agencies around the offices. It was necessary to find different interesting sounds with a known time: for example, the battle of the clock, the shot of a cannon, the sound of the arrival of a train at a train station, and so on.

The algorithm was as follows:

• We found information about an unusual sound attraction or just an interesting sound.
• Then there was confirmation that the thing was still in place (for example, from a fresh photo on Wikimapia or Panoramo). If there was an opportunity, a fresh video of tourists on Youtube was immediately searched to confirm the fact that the piece was in place. Sometimes we had to communicate with our tourists via social networks and ask if this object was working: tweets and statuses helped a lot, it was possible to catch those who are right there on the spot.
• The object was entered into the database: where, what, how, links to proofs.
• After that, it was necessary to identify the notes that were created by the landmark. For this, either a video from Youtube was used, from which a key sound was cut out, or older videos from various tourist sites and reviews. The composer drove the passage into a special software, which gave the exact frequency of sound (notes).

Here is a part of the base on the map (the final sounds of the video). It looked just like a working draft.

About half of the objects were not yet synchronized in time, but about half of the base “sounded” at 14:00 Moscow time. At the same time, not every sound started exactly at 14: for example, one clock needed about 10 seconds to play the intro and start beating.

The first base included about fifty sounds described in this way. It was necessary to find a composer. They showed it to several professionals - and received a refusal from everyone. According to people involved in music, it is impossible to add a melody from the sounds of the world, because most of the sounds of bell-fightings and others are not tuned in a single system and, accordingly, how many do not add up - there will be no harmony. The director continued to aggressively search and inspect objects with sound and make tables with their musical affiliation and time of sound.

At the same time for the presentation, we have collected such a simple video with gunshots in different countries, which are repeated day after day at the same time:



And then they showed the concept and the base to another composer. He looked at all this for a while, thought hard, and then said that in principle it is real (hurray!), But nothing will come out of this base. It was a kind of art house mix, since there were few sounds, plus they were not very coordinated in tonalities. I had to supplement the base - I needed a second run, more sounds (all my friends in social networks had been interviewed here and just asked questions in popular groups and forums), but the composer still said that only something like dubstep could be put together.

Second iteration

Then we decided to introduce new harmonic elements, slightly changing the concept of the video. The original plan was this: to find objects that sound at the right time. It became clear that only with them will not work - so we began to supplement the base with the fact that it sounds with the participation of man. With these things it has become much easier: after all, they can “play" at any time, that is, exactly when it is necessary for our melody. The task was for a person, for example, to tap a certain rhythm, and because of this, we would get the missing instrument. We made the third approach to the base, increased it to almost 300 sounds.

The composer with great patience sat down to work again. After a few days of hard work, his thoughts turned into a sketch of a melody. It was possible - and it was possible after 5 different professionals said that nothing will come of it!



Then I had to either go to specific places, or look for people who would shoot on the spot. As a result, it was decided to find people on the spot, otherwise no budget would be enough. First, they brought up contacts of all acquaintances and friends of acquaintances in different countries: approximately half of the base was closed by this. Somewhere there were freelance correspondents of agencies, TV reporters, just people who lived abroad. Another half of the base of sounds selected for the video, it was necessary to close the people about whom we did not know anything. Then colleagues from mfive began to search on social networks - they sat on Facebook, Vkontakte, Twitter, even Odnoklassniki and various local networks, wrote ads, or accessed. If the ad did not work - they simply did a sample in the search for those who were online in the right country - and wrote to everyone in turn, communicated. Units were sent immediately and without questions, but most of the people were very interesting. When they got acquainted with the concept, if they had the opportunity, they almost immediately wanted to participate. Interestingly, the question of money went into the background. They told the idea - it was interesting for everyone to try. And, of course, there was no task to find professionals: any people who had a suitable smartphone or camera (they needed HD-shooting) came up, could reach the object and shoot it.

Then we began to prepare for each impromptu team on-site shooting requirements. The director collected dozens of photos of the site from various services and social networks, watched videos, satellite images, panoramas - and imagined how exactly the point looked at the right time. Then he wrote detailed requirements on how to shoot, how to stand, where to hold the phone and so on. Clearly, it was necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the technology: the microphones of smartphones against the wind do not fit at all, the cameras give a rather narrow dynamic range, plus there are a number of other features. All this is reflected in the requirements. Here is an example of such a document (different pages for two different objects: in some places they were drawn, in some places they were rendered):





In the end it turned out that the entire movie was filmed by the director directly from the computer: he visited only one central shooting area (where the sounds came together), and even communicated with the composer mostly remotely.

At the pre-harvest stage, each team examined the objects. Surprises began: for example, three people came to Amsterdam for musical classics. And the classics do not work - the local complained that they interfere with sleep, and the city administration removed them. I had to urgently look for a replacement - fortunately, the classics were not alone.

Here we are gradually coming to the main issue of Youtube comments - is it really possible for everyone at the same time. No, not at all: the installation was. 80% were synchronized, but somewhere I had to take duplicates, somewhere went wrong on timing and so on. What is interesting is that none of the impromptu teams did not “continue” the object, that is, everyone came and did everything right. For this worried the most.

After such projects I want to believe in people, in their sincerity and kindness. Here are a couple of stories with how everything went: for example, there are few inhabitants as such on St. Martin, and there are almost no Russian tourists. Compatriots for the year there are a few dozen. Of course, by the time there was no one there. They began to "wool" local online - no one else either. Then they simply began to look who is active on the Internet - and found the site of a local freelance designer. He was ready to go and take off the plane at the right time. The guy rode a bicycle in just a few hours, waited a long time at the strip - and all for the sake of a couple of seconds. Then he called and, literally choking with joy, he asked whether it worked or not. It turned out there is in the video.

In India, the girl plays in the temple: it was probably the most difficult shooting from an organizational point of view. The couple has been traveling around India for almost a year and a half. The moment we contacted, they were in a different state, but they liked the idea, and they drove off. We traveled by train, on mopeds, almost halfway through the country. As a result, it turned out on the spot that the temple was closed for restoration, no one from the administration is present, but there is an evil guard. I had to use all the skills of social engineering: after all, it turned out to sneak inside on the sly.



Yes, all the people at all points of the survey are the most ordinary people who simply liked the idea and agreed to take part in our experiment. Even in Moscow, they did not invite professional actors, but called those to whom it was really interesting: the guys in the studio are a real musician, a real DJ and a real student.

Next was the final installation. Sounds did not “pull up” anywhere, that is, they completely retained their original sound. And then - a lot of the joy of those who participated and the mass video views. And - an unexpected question from the security service: “why did they shoot such an expensive movie” - it was still hard to believe that the shooting was done using crowd-based methods and without simultaneous visits to a bunch of countries.

And then, a few months later - a bunch of prestigious professional awards. At the time of the publication of this topic on Habré, the video already has about a million views (of which the original video on Youtube collected more than 860 thousand).