Filming in a big warehouse - how to?

A

andrew00

Well-known member
Hey,

So I've a shoot coming up next weekend and have just heard the original venue for the performance bit has fallen through for some dumb reason. We're looking at alternatives, most are a bit cheesey - basically stages in bars/clubs we can tart up a bit.

One alternative we have is a warehouse, it's big, wide and tall and has white walls.

I'm trying to figure out how to adapt the shoot to this warehouse, theoretically, as it does seem a better location than a small club stage.

But at the same time I don't know how to change a shoot that would've begun with black walls, tarted up with led lights and shiny lametta curtains, streamers and glitter, to something that could work in a big warehouse.

One of the band members, who found the warehouse, is a pretty handy builder so was talking about building a set, basically some wood frames for a backwall, ceiling and side walls and putting mesh across them for hanging stuff.

Interesting idea, no idea it'd work or how the light would affect this, many a variable etc!

I could do with some help please!

Oh and I should say I'm traveling to the band who are a few hours away by drive so it's not a local thing I can really go to in advance at this late notice.
 
I just shot in a warehouse, but I had the advantage of it being run down and old, whereas yours sounds pretty clean; however, there's plenty of ways to utilize that depending on the style of song.

If you check out The Thermals - Pillar of Salt music video you can see how a small white room was turned into an awesome funny video. Definitely good inspiration.

Maybe you can bring a huge crowd into the warehouse?

Another thing you could do is light it fairly dark and throw rear-projection on the walls and onto the band itself. I'm doing something similar for an upcoming music video and you'll get some great results with simple solutions I think.
 
Alas I've less scope to change things about, though I have been meaning to do something w/a projection.

It's actually part of two videos, this'll be the performance part of video one, there's other scenes, a story going on basically so it needs to keep in the theme of the video, looks like it fits etc. Hence the having to find a way to put the square peg into the round hole of the warehouse!
 
Ah I see. What's the concept of the overall video then? That would probably aid in giving you some advice from myself and others if we knew what you're overall vision is.
 
Man I wish I had a big warehouse like that right now. I am having to fake a large space like that.
 
Just show the band performing in the warehouse - more interesting visually than led lights, shiny lametta curtains, streamers and glitter. If you want to get funny/ironic, you could mock the traditional performance thing by showing the band performing to an 'audience' of cutout cardboard fans? Or being ignored by warehouse workers moving boxes around?
 
Ok so the concept is that in the first of two videos, the band are performing and at the same time there's little vignettes of a puppet version of the singer being made by basement scientists. So whilst the band are playing we see the puppet coming to life and being trained to be a rock star w/cliched rock 'moves' etc.

Later there's a party scene where the lead singer essentially goes crazy and starts tearing the place up, acting aggressive etc before storming out and being sick. At this point the scientists approach the other band members and they talk.

As the song reaches the end the band are performing and the puppet arrives and the singer is kicked out the band, replaced by his puppet.

The song is a rock song but has a jazzy edge so it's tongue in cheek.

The second video is a more straight forward rock song and features the singer walking the streets singing the song and realising all along that he was being framed by the scientists, basically we play the vignettes again but this time w/a scientist there sabotaging him.

Meanwhile the puppet has gone out of control and acts much worse than the singer ever did, gropes women etc, and has the band tied up in a basement. The singer returns and basically destroys the puppet with his awesome dancing and saves the day!

The warehouse bit would be the performance for video one, so we can work with a video within a video idea to keep it tongue in cheek, but still want it to look visually interesting and so a plain warehouse won't really work, esp as we planned for a nice colourful performance part w/lots of red and blue streamers and the led lights etc.

I'm tempted to play it up more and have shots of people working on the shoot throwing the streamers on the band etc but wonder if it'll be going too far.
 
If puppets are a theme throughout why not change it up a bit and make them marionettes? Attach strings to them and make it as if their moves are controlled from above?
 
Some awesome ideas in here - I gotta bring my next video idea to DVX!

Love both clang & Rory's input!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top