It takes me anywhere from 5-10 days to produce the walkthrough videos I do. Here's a bit of what's involved:
- The first day is spent downloading the library, make Cubase tracks for every instrument's articulation, figure out the delays, and start coming up with ideas. A proper demo doesn't just use legato patches, it showcases all of the articulations unique to that library, so I need to spend time with the library and figure out what makes it special, explore the mic options, and how it works in general.
- Then I write the demo, which can take a day or several days...when you know a demo is going to be analyzed for any flaws you have to be very meticulous. On top of that, I try to make it a piece that stands alone, with a memorable melody or hook. Most of my demos make it onto an album I release later.
- I'm constantly refining the track, bouncing it and listening in my car, sending to the developer for feedback. I usually don't have much feedback from the developer anymore, which means I'm getting better I guess. Finally, after several versions and mixing, the track is ready to go.
- Then I have to start on the video portion. How do I best explain what I did and how I used the library? I write out a full script because I've tried to just riff off the top of my head and I generally don't explain things fully or I leave important parts out. This script takes several hours.
- Then I have to set up my camera and lighting gear. I'm a video producer so you'd think that makes things go faster, but it just makes me more particular about how things look. So it's 3 point lighting, a proper cinema camera with overhead boom mic, etc. Sure, I could keep this gear set up in my studio but it'd look like a mess all the time with wires running everywhere, so I break it down between shoots. I also have to set up the screen capture and make sure that's all working.
- I shoot the whole thing, which takes longer than it should because even though I'm using a teleprompter to read my script, I still fumble on words every once in a while.
- I do all the screen captures. Playing individual sections or just certain tracks. Then I screen capture the main DAW play through, in which I capture about 7-10 different views of the DAW (strings, brass, perc, all tracks, piano roll, etc) so I can edit those all together later.
- Then I ingest all the footage and edit it all together, choosing the best takes, adding in the correct screen captures, balancing all the audio levels so the voice isn't louder than the music, and vice-versa. Doing overlapped edits on stuff so there's overlap between my talking and the screencast, to keep the video flowing well and to keep it from becoming boring.
- When I have an edit that works, I send the video to the developer to make sure they're ok with everything. Then I export the final master. Then I also often create a 1 minute social media version in three formats - 16x9, 1x1, and 9x16.
So yeah, the better part of 1-2 weeks. I'm sure some folks could do it quicker, but I'd prefer to put the time into it and make something very polished that I'm proud to have my face on. That's also why I only do a couple of them a year nowadays. But, yes, I do get paid.