Hi,
A couple of funny notes ... a friend of mine did videos for a couple of bands in Santa Barbara and I got to see it done ... and he had one cheating little bit that was very cool ... a clock with tenths of seconds on it moving in the background ... away from the shot itself, and when the camera was not the "on shot", it needed to catch that clock asap. The side bit of that is that you have a clock now, and you can use the same clock in the studio if you need.
I don't know, how efficient this was, but he went on to do several bands in there, and I moved away to the Pacific Northwest, and lost touch, but would have liked to see it again. He did everything with 2 takes, and the clock was red on one and blue on the other, just in case, but I do not know if "timing" was an issue, other than in two takes, it would be impossible for the folks to be exact and perfectly in time for a specific moment, is my only thought.
When I did my film of Kevin Ayers' song, I used a cassette during shooting, so the folks would know where/when and such, but there was no dialogue per se, as the song was the dialogue. Putting it together in the studio was a matter of timing the music to the frames, and that was not as hard, taking away a frame or two (Super 8) ... but matching a 5 second drum break in the middle of a sequence was tough, but I got it done, and Tom Payne (the drummer) helped tremendously on that and I got it to fit the film.
It was never released, because Ray Manzarek would not let me use the bit by the Doors at the end, and I could not find a singer that could repeat that same set of words and scream (the opening of American Prayer all the way to "has this dream stopped"?)
I find it easy to get "visuals" to a band's music (it's how I interpret all music!), but I have to admit that I do not look forward to sync issues ... although I have to tell you that in the film, in the studio, when I match perfect two parts ... I was high for 2 days because of it!
Challenges, in film/video, just like directing with actors, is a wonderful challenge and sometimes, the things that happen ... are neat. The special moment is always a treat, but filming a band "live", is not exactly something that I would want to do, although I could easily direct it, or run a camera ... which is my biggest complaint about folks doing so ... most idiots don't even know the music ... and one example was GONG in SF's International Music Festival, when Daevid Allen was playing to the camera, started his thing, and 20 seconds later, the camera moved away, and Daevid in a funny sort of way did a finger!
A good director would not have allowed "moments" to slip away ... EVER!
The video camera I want ... is about 2K now, and it has a sync unit in it, although it would take me a long time to learn it well enough to know how to use properly, and probably would go around it until such a time. But for rehearsal? I would rehearse straight out away from the cameras to get folks familiar and comfortable with people coming and going around you ... which is very annoying for some players. I think that I might be real slow about music with a band live ... and study it hard! This way you also learn how to get around it if you absolutely have to.