New music video premiering exclusively at Spin.com!

Jeff Ray

Jeff Ray

Active member
Hey guys,

This was my first major label music video that just premiered exclusively at Spin Magazines official website. So color me all sorts of amped.

http://www.spin.com/video/2008/02/080206_sounds_under_radio/

It's a shitty youtube-quality compression, so I'll (briefly) put up a quicktime version for tonight.

whoisjonray.com/clients/sonybmg/sur_sellout_finalcut5.mov

Budget was next to nothing. I served as director/DP/editor. Crew of 4 (myself included). Stock HVX. All the budget went to renting the china balls and reserving the location. Two day shoot. Twixtor used for some of the "extreme" slow-motion clips.

Think that about sums it up.

Enjoy.
 
hahaha.....what do you mean next to nothing.....200 dollars or 2k or 20k?

that video looked great!

what were the lights in the very back? 1k's? What kind of board did you use for the China balls that was really a great music video

what is twiktor?

kudos to you

Ronster
 
Ronster said:
hahaha.....what do you mean next to nothing.....200 dollars or 2k or 20k?

that video looked great!

what were the lights in the very back? 1k's? What kind of board did you use for the China balls that was really a great music video

what is twiktor?

kudos to you

Ronster
Click to expand...

The whole video (what with additional expenses after shooting wrapped, i.e. hard-drives for storage, etc.) was well under $4k. But it all went to rental equipment, location fees, plus offering a meager hourly wage for our crew.

Lights in the back were 1k's and flourescents for the horizontal lined lights. It's actually morose code that spells out S.U.R. (the band's initials, Sounds Under Radio) and the label is trying to market that logo for future merch, ad revenue, etc.

I can't recall the exact name of the lightboard we used to control the china balls. We hired a 4th crew guy from the rental house we were using to orchestrate all the lighting cues.

And yes, Twixtor was the software used. And that thing nearly killed my computer. It takes forrrrrrrever to render Twixtor footage. But cool effect I guess.
 
The picture looked really clean; great overall vid.

Love the china balls, but the flourescents in the background looked a bit out of place to me. Couldn't make out that it was a logo or spelling out anything, just looked like pieces of the set that accidentally made it into the frame. Just my opinion, though.

Also, I noticed some of the post effects were going outside of the 16:9 area?? just after the first 1/3rd of the video, it was pretty noticeable...

Great vid though, and congrats on the step up!
 
ryan brown said:
The picture looked really clean; great overall vid.

Love the china balls, but the flourescents in the background looked a bit out of place to me. Couldn't make out that it was a logo or spelling out anything, just looked like pieces of the set that accidentally made it into the frame. Just my opinion, though.

Also, I noticed some of the post effects were going outside of the 16:9 area?? just after the first 1/3rd of the video, it was pretty noticeable...

Great vid though, and congrats on the step up!
Click to expand...

Can you describe exactly what effect your talking about that is going out of the 16x9 frame?
 
Ive done a lot of low budget videos www.thebuzzla.com thats my stuff, but I must say this look is awesome!!!!!!!!!! I feel the fact you can't tell it's the spelling of the band in the lights is cool....and the fluorescents added for me a different light source, which is rad. honestly this is a great video you should be proud.

thanks for answering my questions

Ronster
 
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Hey Jeff - nice to see a fellow Austinite doing some great music video work.
Just curious - where'd you shoot this?


Nice work!
:thumbsup:
 
Luis Caffesse said:
Hey Jeff - nice to see a fellow Austinite doing some great music video work.
Just curious - where'd you shoot this?


Nice work!
:thumbsup:
Click to expand...

We shot this about 45 minutes outside of Austin in an old warehouse in Smithsville. It's this quaint little town where they shot that Sandra Bullock movie Hope Floats and apparently Terrence Malick is currently casting his new movie there and shooting some stuff there as well.
 
Jeff that was frickin' awesome....really loved the look, the moves and the cut.

I liked the song so much, I bought the EP :)

Keep up the nice work.
 
disjecta said:
Jeff that was frickin' awesome....really loved the look, the moves and the cut.

I liked the song so much, I bought the EP :)

Keep up the nice work.
Click to expand...


That's awesome dude. Tell your friends about them too! They're really great guys and I hope they become the huge rockstars they deserve to be.

You should check out they're myspace page and listen to "Wasteland". It's off they're full length album thats being released March 18th, I believe. It's great. The whole album is amazing.

www.myspace.com/soundsunderradio

Thanks bro.
 
Jeff Ray said:
That's awesome dude. Tell your friends about them too! They're really great guys and I hope they become the huge rockstars they deserve to be.

You should check out they're myspace page and listen to "Wasteland". It's off they're full length album thats being released March 18th, I believe. It's great. The whole album is amazing.

www.myspace.com/soundsunderradio

Thanks bro.
Click to expand...

Jeff:

Kudos on a GREAT job.

My only beef is that every stupid record producer looks at stuff like this and then tells all of the production companies bidding what should be a $20,000.00 to $40,000.00 music video, "hey, I saw this music video this guy in Austin did for $4,000.00, it looked kick ass, your budget is $4,000.00". Oh well, I guess you do what you have to do. It looks like a MUCH more expensive video and you did a really nice job directing and lighting it.

Awesome, but I guess nobody can make a living doing music videos anymore, huh?

All my best,

Dan
 
puredrifting said:
Jeff:

Kudos on a GREAT job.

My only beef is that every stupid record producer looks at stuff like this and then tells all of the production companies bidding what should be a $20,000.00 to $40,000.00 music video, "hey, I saw this music video this guy in Austin did for $4,000.00, it looked kick ass, your budget is $4,000.00". Oh well, I guess you do what you have to do. It looks like a MUCH more expensive video and you did a really nice job directing and lighting it.

Awesome, but I guess nobody can make a living doing music videos anymore, huh?

All my best,

Dan
Click to expand...

Seriously, I don't think I've ever made any money off any music video, ever.

Sad.

But they are fun, creative little experiments.

And now back to doing stupid, corporate videos and local TV ads....

Goodness...

Glad you liked it though!
 
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