I have completed a rough cut of the video. I added both the originally recorded footsteps and the ADR footsteps to match the visuals, and I also restructured the sequence of shots for a more natural flow.

One of the most difficult parts was syncing the footsteps with the video. Since I was using contact microphones, I thought using a slate would be pointless, so I decided not to use one during filming, assuming I could just sync everything later. This turned out to be a serious mistake—syncing was much harder than I expected. Next time I film using contact mics, I will definitely include some kind of slate action, even if it’s just stomping the ground, to leave a clear sync marker.

Another issue was that the latter part of the microphone recording was unusable. I hadn’t monitored the recording with headphones during the shoot, which resulted in serious problems. The mic wasn’t properly attached to my foot in the later recordings, so it failed to capture the sound of my steps and recorded mostly noise instead. I had to re-record many of those parts. Also, I didn’t keep notes on which recordings corresponded to which videos, so finding the right audio files became time-consuming and tedious.

In the end, I had to re-record not only my own footsteps for some clips, but also the footsteps of the people who walked with me. For the ADR, I watched the rough cut silently on my phone and walked in sync with the visuals, changing shoes and recording environments to match the original context as closely as possible. Interestingly, the differences in sound were less noticeable than I expected.

My syncing process involved placing the video and the corresponding audio file together in the editing software, amplifying the audio waveforms to make them visible, and marking the visual moment when a foot hits the ground. I then aligned that moment with the peak of the waveform. Initially, I had tried a different method: watching the video while using MIDI triggers in Ableton Live to mark each footstep in real-time. However, my reaction speed varied and the waveform itself often included noise or unclear foot-lift sounds, which made precise syncing difficult. I abandoned that approach. In retrospect, none of this would have been necessary had I included some form of slate during filming—but it’s a valuable lesson for future shoots.

The overall feel of the video isn’t bad, but because there is no background sound, the abrupt start and stop of the footstep sounds can feel unnatural. I’m considering adding a very subtle layer of ambient noise throughout the video and applying fade-ins and fade-outs to the footstep sounds to smooth out those transitions. I plan to work on the sound editing tomorrow, and I’ll also finalize some visual details like end credits and transitions.