Music Video - Sean Ward - "I Was Made For This"

aloni

aloni

Member
A music video I directed for Toronto's offbeat hip-hop group "Sean Ward and The Realness".
This was tons of fun to shoot. All shot gorilla style with no lights... just the HVX, an ipod and portable speakers.

Enjoy (and let me know what you think):

High Res Quicktime: http://www.getreactiv.com/Videos/SeanWard-High.mov

Flash Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/404838

SeanWard08.jpg


SeanWard07.jpg


SeanWard09.jpg
 
Nice work! I like the tone and fonts that were combined. Really made things flow nicely. Although I would of liked a little more interactivity with the people. :beer:
 
I liked the wipes and the whole look of the video is pretty cool. Wish you would have used a wider lens on all the shots of them rapping...as cliche as it might, I don't know, I think it might have been cool.

I think the main thing that could have helped it was just more shot variety. Not so much of them just walking down the street. The guy with the record though, and them playing inside the window, along with them interacting with people on the street were all great. Very cool and very fun.

Haha, oh man, just finished it. The end makes it with everyone taking pictures of it. Great job, I dig it.
 
haha yeah I thought it was beastie boy-ish too, which is a good thing in my opinion.

I thought it was a really fun video. Great wipes with the different cars and such... my favourite shot would probably be the quick zoom out of the band playing around in the store window. That got a decent lol from me. I also felt you had a great shot variety, and didn't feel it was getting old, but that's just my opinion.

Great work mate!
 
Absolutely fantastic! I love this video. Great song too! The pacing is fast and the graphics fit perfectly. Keep up the good work!
 
Thanks for the responses guys... yeah this was a lot of fun to shoot.
Luckily no issues with police or any security at any point. lol

If you look closely you may catch a "The Apollo" sign in the background of some of the shots.
There is no Apollo theatre in Toronto... we happened to shoot in the same week that the new "Hulk" movie was being filmed in Toronto.(seriously, didn't anybody tell those guys we are shooting in Toronto that week?? Geez! Wait what? They actually paid for their permits??.. oh ok then nevermind).
Parts of Toronto were transformed to look like Harlem NY... which we sorta took advantage of whenever we could.

I'm loving the Beastie Boyz comments... that wasn't what I had originally planned... but as we were shooting I could tell it was going to have that vibe.

This was shot with no permits and no official extras... all the people on the streets are .. well... real people (some may or may not be robots) ..

I was surprised at how very little interaction we got from people... even when I asked Sean to purposely try and get a reaction from people.

My favorite is the dude scratching his chin at the end... he stood there watching them perform an entire take. He didn't really understand what was happening.. he didn't think to look across the street (that way he would have seen me and my DP).

I kind of agree with RyanT though... I would have liked to have a little more variety of shots in some sections.

Glad you guys like it though.

I'll post another video tomorrow.
 
i love this video. yo. i'm the director of a Urban video show in philly, you gotta get me that video. let me get your email so i can give you my info
 
Yeah... I dig dat.
A rare combo on here for me, video + music that are tres cool! YAY.
nice one.
 
Hi Alon, great job. I love that look for music videos.

Please share with me how I can achieve that with my stock HVX. You said you shot the entire thing "Gorilla Style" - no lights - just the HVX, does that mean you had no adapter either?

If so, what NLE did you use and what colour correction and other plugins did you use to achieve the brilliant film look you've clearly mastered in the Sean Ward video?

Would you say that the sunlight was a large contributer to the look? - we don't get that kind of whether here in England :( - Boo Hoo!

Many thanks in advance.
Phill
 
Phill Mason said:
Hi Alon, great job. I love that look for music videos.

Please share with me how I can achieve that with my stock HVX. You said you shot the entire thing "Gorilla Style" - no lights - just the HVX, does that mean you had no adapter either?

If so, what NLE did you use and what colour correction and other plugins did you use to achieve the brilliant film look you've clearly mastered in the Sean Ward video?

Would you say that the sunlight was a large contributer to the look? - we don't get that kind of whether here in England :( - Boo Hoo!

Many thanks in advance.
Phill
Click to expand...


Thanks for the kind words Phill.
There was no lens adapter on the HVX. I give credit to my DP first for exposing properly given the odd circumstances. It was sunny that day in Toronto which definitly didn't help because parts of the street were in the shade (of buildings in the city) and other parts would get blown out by the sun.

The best thing Carl (the DP on the shoot) could do was to try and properly expose the foreground. We just didn't worry about the background as much as long as Sean and the rest of the band looked good. We tried to shoot in shaded areas.

The weather in england would be more ideal to shoot in if you get an overcast day where you can get even lighting (specifically when shooting this style of video).

Post production played a big part in getting the look.

I did all the post production in Final Cut Pro. Used a bunch of 3rd party plugins to get the look. I used Nattress film effects for the bleach look and the grain. This helped especially due to the fact that it made the "blown out" backgrounds look more intentional and less distracting.

I also used the standard "3 Way color corrector" and "Magic Bullet (for Editors)" for the colour correction.

In the Magic Bullet color correction I disabled any diffusion. I find a lot of people try to diffuse the whites when attempting to get that film look... which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I don't like doing it. What I did do is add a "0.6" Gaussian blur to the video. This softened the sharp "video" look. However, I made sure to add the blur underneath the added film grain effect. The grain was the very last layer of effects. This way the grain stays sharp, but the video gets a slightly soften feel.

This worked really well for that modern yet "70s" film look.. I don't know if it's a fail-safe way to make your video look like film by any means. I'm sure it's something that needs to be tailored to your own video.

Hope that helps.
 
Thanks Alon for the detailed response. I really appreciate you sharing your process. Its really encouraging to see what is possible with the HVX as standard and your comments about the shade during your shoot.

It seems most users are pleased with the magic bullet plugin, so I may also go that route, but I'm currently still working on testing various workflows.

I need to get outside and start using mine more often.

I'll be looking forward to your future footage and thanks again for your time.

Phill
 
so good. i just watched a whole bunch of your videos and i LOVE em. they're creative and beautiful. which is so refreshing compared to most of the videos around here which are just beautiful. awesome job!

p.s. i think the bicycles are my new favorite band.
 
TheMacB said:
so good. i just watched a whole bunch of your videos and i LOVE em. they're creative and beautiful. which is so refreshing compared to most of the videos around here which are just beautiful. awesome job!

p.s. i think the bicycles are my new favorite band.
Click to expand...

Ha! Thank you so much. That made my day.
The Bicycles videos were directed by Brent Quigley who is also on the reactiv roster. I Dp'd the two videos for him.. also shot on the HVX.

Glad you like the vids. I'm working on a few more soon.. I'll also post some of the other ones in high-res here soon.

Thanks again...
 
Aside from being white, Sean Ward exhibit true hip hop authenticity (back in the 90's). Fun lyrics that you can listen to as a kid with your parents driving and singing along. Liked the look of video, very old school. Did you use motion for the graphics? which editing software do you use
 
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