2nd Music Video - The Transit War - "Kerosene"

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XDeathOrGloryX

Active member
hey guys. this is my second shot at a music video. its kind of funny how the video came together. the guitarist for the band, Larger Than Life (the first video i did), asked me to do a video for his friends' band. i agreed, not really wanting to do it, and before i had ever heard the song. luckily the band was really cool to work with, and are really talented as well.

anyway, this video was kind of a "Show Up and Shoot It" type of thing. the performance footage was shot in this old little theatre room at Grossmont College here in San Diego. i had no idea what the stage looked like before showing up that morning, and no idea what i was gonna do lighting-wise. we ended up knocking out that stuff in like 5 hours or so.

the narrative stuff we shot like a couple weeks later. we wanted to shoot at SDSU's library, but we were getting resistance from the people there (since we werent students of the school), so we asked Grossmont to use their library (even though i didnt like the atmosphere nearly as much)... and they agreed but said we could only shoot during OPEN hours.

so we had to work around the students there studying. which means we had to whisper for the most part, and bring a limited amount of gear in (no dolly or jib or anything), and we only had 4 hours to shoot it all. i had no shot list or storyboards, so all the narrative stuff was basically improvised.

but yeah, for a couple days of shooting, and not really having done any preproduction, i was pretty happy with how it came out.

the video is now up on Launch.com, but i think a better compressed version can be found here: http://www.jetskier79.com/ewp/TWarMed_Prog001.mov

anyway, feedback would be great. and check out the band's website at www.TheTransitWar.com

ps. sorry if it looks dark to some of you. apparently the brightness looks ok on a lot of powerbooks, but it looks like hell on my PC monitor. i just know it looked good on a properly balanced NTSC monitor. im not sure why it got darker when it was compressed.
 
i thought it was dope ass, ya, definately dope ass. only idea i had was for when things like the book being shut next to the guys ear, if you got a little closer in on his head (his ear in particular) it might have given it a little more umph. but what do i know, it probably turned out the way you intended, it was just a thought i had. haha sorry that was really disorganized sounding. whatever, that was a sick video.
 
Man I loved that opening wide shot!

... and was waiting for more ... but none came :-( I felt a little too close to the band with all of the Med/CU shots. Do you have any more really wides that you could carefully place in?

Nice cuts/edits, too. Oh and the sillouettes rocked.

Keep the x'es bro and send adam a gorilla biscuits cd :-P

-K
 
Nice work man, I am going back and forth about shooting film vs digital. Im so confused. You made that DVX look amazing in the theatre band performace portion. The library stuff was good too, but the band performance was most impressive. I am curious what your settings on the camera were used and if any filters were used on the camera or in post. Once again very good video.
 
Death of Glory

Loved the music. I think the compression added a slight lisp to the lead singer, or maybe he recently got a lip/tongue ring and hasn't gotten used to it? I really got into the song though. I totally agree with rene rene. I wish i saw more close up shots. It looks as though you shot almost everything hand held, which gives the video a certain look, but combining that with even some boring tripod pans would have added a lot to it. The pace of the video was right on though, and overall I enjoyed it. Did the band like the outcome? I agree with Toaster as well...the opening shots of the band were the best...great dolly shots, but wish there were more. I really liked the silhouette shots, and wished there was a close up on the mini guitar solo right after the silhouette sequence.

Good Stuff especially with the amount of time you shot it in.

-Kevin
 
thanks toaster. the wides i used were pretty much the only ones i liked. the stage was small so it was hard at times during the fast dolly moves to keep the white walls on the side out of the shots.

haha. and ill have these X's til i die...

aquarius... if you dont have a big budget, just go digital. both my videos ive done, weve spent less than $100 bucks each on them. hopefully you have some good friends who will work for free on your crew though. haha. as far as settings.

24p, letterbox, 1/60th shutter during performance, master ped - 4, thats about it. i just desaturated the footage a little in post, but not much else. glad you liked the look.

kevin, thanks for the compliments. the band was pretty happy with how it came out. which is good. as far as why i shot all handheld in the library. it was just a time thing. everything was run and gun, and if i had spent literally 2 minutes longer on anything, we wouldnt have gotten our last shots of the day. we were shooting as the library was starting to lock its doors.

jp, thanks. i will hopefully be doing a hardcore/screamo band's video this summer. maybe youll dig that one a little more. haha.
 
Nicely done. I liked the pacing and the theater shots. esp. the sillouette. The libraray shots were ok - framing and the story line was good, but they seemd a little flat due to the lighting. But seeing as how you had to do it run and gun style it came out really well.
 
I really like that. The venu you shot is was really good. the colors looked clean and the song is really good. I think if you could have gotten a few more shots of the drummer playing more agressive it would have looked better all in all but good job.
 
very nice!
at first i didn't bother reading your story and just clicked the link.
as i was watching i noticed everything looked really familiar.
The last shot where it panned upward to the ceiling clinched it for me, then i read your story.

Who knew there'd be more Grossmont college students on this forum??
 
chayse... thanks man. the video you have in your sig is pretty badass looking for the dvx. good job too.

waltind... i like the performance stuff a hell of a lot better too. that seems to be the general concensus (sp?). but yeah, i really wish we had more time in the library cuz there were some things i wanted to try out, but just didnt have the time. =/

img... im glad the colors and everything look good for everyone. my PC monitor makes it look like hell. thanks.

tjohara99... haha. you go to grossmont too? thats awesome. im assuming your in the media program there? what do you think of it? i pretty much hated it. haha. thanks.

toilet bob... hmm. i thought the story dragged more in the beginning. before she finds the book on the shelf. thats where i thought it picked up a little. but im so far passed thinking about re-editing anything, itll have to live. haha. thanks man, everytime i think about how much i dont really love the video, i think... "man, its not that bad for the amount of prep/work that went into it." too bad everyone who sees it wont have the backstory to base their judgements on. haha.
 
nah, i used to go there, i'm at state now. i only took a basic cinematography class, but yeah it was pretty lame. the cool part was making funny videos and showing them to the whole class, and making people fall out of their chairs.
 
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