MUSIC VIDEO for GEFFEN RECORDS - "Love is Wicked"

T

Tim Naylor

Veteran
www.sampsonandnaylor.com
It's the thumbnail, top row / center.
Shot in Kingston Jamaica and did some pick ups in Far Rockaway Queens (can you guess which shots).

Background:
We got a call on a Thursday, flew out to Kingston Ja on a Wed (on an expired passport, that's another story), scouted, cast and prepped Wed/Thurs, and shot on a Friday. Budget was tiny (25k and that included airfares, hotel, post, etc). Cashed in many a favor card. Label loves it. Considering they spent 300k and 150k on previous vids that didn't get much love, we're happy with the results.

It was an HVX 200 and steadicam Merlin show. Small HMI, Kino and tungsten package.

Just reached top 50 of most played new vids on youtube.

When our production company, Uncle, in LA saw the offline link, they couldn't believe it was HD and thought it was already onlined. A big up to the little camera that can.

Will post bigger better onlined file soon.
 
Very pro piece. Did you shoot multiple HVXs? and how did you handle the synch and playback?


I'd say you passed the audition and time to get 250k next time and quite a nice piece to land that with now.

cheers
 
Tim Naylor said:
www.sampsonandnaylor.com
It's the thumbnail, top row / center.
Shot in Kingston Jamaica and did some pick ups in Far Rockaway Queens (can you guess which shots).

Background:
We got a call on a Thursday, flew out to Kingston Ja on a Wed (on an expired passport, that's another story), scouted, cast and prepped Wed/Thurs, and shot on a Friday. Budget was tiny (25k and that included airfares, hotel, post, etc). Cashed in many a favor card. Label loves it. Considering they spent 300k and 150k on previous vids that didn't get much love, we're happy with the results.

It was an HVX 200 and steadicam Merlin show. Small HMI, Kino and tungsten package.

Just reached top 50 of most played new vids on youtube.

When our production company, Uncle, in LA saw the offline link, they couldn't believe it was HD and thought it was already onlined. A big up to the little camera that can.

Will post bigger better onlined file soon.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing this, Tim. I've always wondered: how do producers, like yourself, go about getting music video gigs? What advice would you give to others who would like to go down that path? Start building a reel of spec music videos and hope you get noticed?
 
haha... shot a number of those videos where the pervious video were a few times as expensive as the one we made and didn't even look half-as good as ours. At first i thought it makes me THA' MAN but then i realised that it's just makes me look like an idion with no business skills... Great work though.
 
Hey Tim very nice video,professional and all.
I also took a look at the other ones and one of them caught my eye.That's the look I am going for.I would like to hear what kinda camera and settings for the exterior shots.
First one middle row.The guy in suit running and the ladies walking.
Any info would be helpful.
Thanks and good day.
 
Looks really great! Nice job with the Merlin shots too.

Man, $25K including expenses? You almost gave it away. My personal opinion here, and take it for what it is, but be carefull about being so eager to do a job that you take what they offer and bust your own butt and everyone elses to make it happen.

You have a good level of skill, it is worth a centain price. If you give it away, it will be harder to get what you really derserve the next time, and you can bet they'll be offering less NOT MORE next time.

Best,
Kevin
 
kevinM said:
Looks really great! Nice job with the Merlin shots too.

Man, $25K including expenses? You almost gave it away. My personal opinion here, and take it for what it is, but be carefull about being so eager to do a job that you take what they offer and bust your own butt and everyone elses to make it happen.

You have a good level of skill, it is worth a centain price. If you give it away, it will be harder to get what you really derserve the next time, and you can bet they'll be offering less NOT MORE next time.

Best,
Kevin
Click to expand...
I hear you Kevin. We usually do budgets much higher than that. It was one of those situations where the money was out of management's pocket, the label pretty much had nothing left for them. They felt they needed a video that really shows they're from Jamaica (the other one's gave you no clue). They hunted us down as we have a bit of experience shooting in Kingston. We also felt it was imperative to start a good relationship with Geffen as they're cranking out the hits these days. It worked out. We're getting requests for bids at better budgets. It's one of those situations where we felt we had to take a few gambles and sacrifices for work down the road. It's paying off.

Eitherway, one has to be careful not to get the rep for making a dollar out of fifteen cents or you find yourself making fifteen cents. Oddly enough though, we did manage to keep our fees and make something.
 
JimiK said:
Hey Tim very nice video,professional and all.
I also took a look at the other ones and one of them caught my eye.That's the look I am going for.I would like to hear what kinda camera and settings for the exterior shots.
First one middle row.The guy in suit running and the ladies walking.
Any info would be helpful.
Thanks and good day.
Click to expand...
That video was for Universal Artist, Tami Chynn. Shot in NYC, Shadow Studios and Soho/Chinatown. Varicam w/ Cine style Canon Zoom. Steadicam. Fun shoot. One of our first videos. Lighting package was tungsten 5k, 2ks on down - nothing wierd. Sitting in the chair was 5k through bleached muslin. Colors were mostly dialed in on set through white balancing through Lee Swatch book. Small amount of AFX for "nightmare" sequence. Tanisha Scott was the choreographer.

Tami is also on the top row/left video. Great people.
 
ifownlee41nite@mac.com said:
I loved it. Can you be more specific on lighting and give a breakdown. I love the look of the lighting set ups.

How much of the rays coming in from outside to the inside were real, or did you create the effect.

Really curious.

Thanks
Click to expand...
Exterior was just bounce boards. On the steps, we waited for the Sun to begin to set and be low. Their faces worked best with front light, so we scheduled for that as well. Silhouettes of dancers against sun were late in the day. Single dancer in day/int with rays of sunlight was all natural light and a reflector. That and the silhouettes were shot in Far Rockaway queens, near the beach. Rest in Jamaica. Int with white dress was keyed with 1.2k hmi an filled with a 1.2k hmi through silk. Night Int with smoking oil drums was filled by string of bare bulbs on dimmer and kino by camera. Backlights were 1ks and tweenies. Genny 6500 watt putt putt. Singles on blond sitting on oil drum had an inky up high from camera just on her.

Monitoring was mostly on BTH 1700. Waveform was indispensable. Pick ups in queens and drive bys - no monitor.

Coloring was mostly done with white balance. Day WB through 1/2 CTB. Night WB through 1/2 CTO and 1/2 minus Green. Then we fine tuned it on a Avid DS. Beauty work and silhouettes were refined in Flame.

I find HVX 200 really sucks to color correct in DVC HD. Noisy codec. We upconverted via Kona to D5 720p/59.94 uncompressed 8 bit. Then fed it to the DS and Flame.

Camera settins
Cine V
Cine Matrix
-3 Pedestal
+3 Detail Coring
720 24pn
 
SignalPix said:
Thanks for sharing this, Tim. I've always wondered: how do producers, like yourself, go about getting music video gigs? What advice would you give to others who would like to go down that path? Start building a reel of spec music videos and hope you get noticed?
Click to expand...
Spec videos our good. Labels have a whole bush league of new artists in which they need low budget videos made. Approach management. Get them to see your reel. Get your reel online. Very rare people ask us for DVD's. Make sure your links are encoded right. They won't sit though long down loads.

Ask if you can write a treatment on songs. They won't have you write for 100k plus videos out the gate, so learn how to write for budget. Learn to write good treatments or get a treatment writer. Build a library of photo references. They expect them with treatments. Check out Video Static to learn who the production company's are and who comissions what.

Good luck.
 
I feel your pain. We hate that aspect. Recently we've been signed to a rep who's much better at going hardball with a label than we are. Often getting the job is the easier part, it's the record business waters that can be a *****. I come from shooting features and most recently got into to directing and shooting videos. I can tell you, features are much more straight forward than dealing with the Music Biz.
 
You said you work for UNCLE?
That is cool, I did some freelance for them last year. Nice people I worked with.
Video looks great btw.
 
kevinM said:
Man, $25K including expenses? You almost gave it away.
Click to expand...

I have no experience, but i wonder... what justifies $ 25k ? I think it's a lot of money.
The clip looks pro, but there are no fancy studios that have to be decorated or any other constructions that have to be built. Nor did you have to close down a street, etc So it is only the gear, the travelling and the hours of work.
I 've seen people on here do stuff on a 1000$ budget or less, which also looked pro.

I know it's big buisiness and companies are willing to pay a lot of money for a good video. But I just wonder how you can say that 25k is giving it away. Because in my opinion you still keep at least 17k for two weeks of work.

Please correct me if I am seriously wrong, for i have no experience at all.
 
post production is Very expensive, theres travel, food, crew, lodgings, equitpment rentals, permits, etc... 25K is not alot of money.
 
Looks good Tim, CANT WAIT to see the finished product.

Was the Smirnorf "Ice Breaka" video thats on that site shot with the HVX too? (it looks like HVX footage :)

Take care man and good luck with your endeavors!!!
 
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