Music Video, total guerilla shoot - funny story

Rakesh Jacob

Rakesh Jacob

Veteran
http://vimeo.com/7346026


3 days in Corpus Christi and a lot of rejection lead us to just guerilla-ing what we could.

FRIDAY: Arrived in town and wanted to look at the locations that I had asked the artist to scout for. As we drove around and looked at 'em, it became apparent he hadn't really set them up, exactly, he more or less assumed it was all good. Hey he's making a music video, who doesn't wanna be down with that right? Very wrong. So Friday would be spent trying to get locations confirmed for Saturday and Sunday.
Our first location is semi-guerilla-ish. Community center gym: we walk in and tell the first person we see that we had talked to some one about shooting a music video for an inspirational kids song, and they said it was fine. "Um did you talk to Mr. (I don't remember what she said)?" Yeah he said it was cool, we just needed to get some one who could let us in the gym. Could you do that for us tomorrow morning? "Well I'm not in charge of that, that's Phil, let me call him." So we talk to Phil. "Well what did Mr. (what's his name) say he was charging?" Well actually he wasn't cause we grew up in the neighborhood and used to come to this center as kids and we want to shoot the video here, you know, just to give back. :) "Ok that's fine." REAAAAAALLLY? Um... I mean cool. (that was easy, this may work out after all.)

SATURDAY: 6am call time at first location, people show up 8-9ish. When I say people I mean just the artist, his best friend, the hip-hop dancer and his aunt. See the artist put out comments on his myspace that he was shooting a music video, and ALL THESE GIRLS, THAT I TOLD HIM WE NEED TO HAVE SHOW UP, said they were coming. No need to call and stay up on them, I mean a comment on myspace is like a written contract in Texas. So no girls, and no additional dancers other than the one guy that, God bless him, wants it so bad, that he drove 5 hours to be in the video.
4pm call time, second location, exterior in the hood. I HAVE TO get shots as the sun is setting behind the crowd... that... um... should be getting here soon, shouldn't they? Well we scrap the shoot, I wanna keep it all interior anyway cause I like what we shot earlier and the whole hood thing, unless you're a drug dealer turned rapper is so unnecessary. This guy is a clean kid, just out of the Navy so f--k the hood sh!t. Instead WE NEED TO go scouting for girls, make sure they show up tomorrow for the club scene!
8pm, artist says he knows the owner of a strip club that's just a couple blocks form the hotel. WTF AM I STILL DOING IN MY ROOM?? We need to be "scouting" home boy!!!! So.... amazingly good looking women at that club, this is a nice spot! I mean if I ever get rich, this is where I'm coming for a trophy wife for an open marriage. Don't tell my wife I said that. RECORD SCREEEECH!!!! Club owner is actually the manager... and has to make some calls to ask the owners, well thnx for the free t-tties b--ches, we're out!
9pm, the club owner of the night club we are schedualed for in the morning hasn't been answering his phone all day. We need to roll up on his ass at his job and see what's up! NOW! He's not there, the owner isn't there, but the door man, bartenders and tech-guy are there (yes I said tech-guy, every orginization has a resident nerd, even Russian mobsters, don't ask, I didn't). After a lot of run around we manage to get the tech-guy to agree to letting us in at 11am. And we confirmed it with the owner and manager finally.
12am... thinking....
1am I call the artist, DUDE GET UP! The potential for them flaking out in the morning is beyond potential, it's a probability, nay an inevitability. Here's the plan, it's their bussiest night so the owner and manager are gonna be there, ask them if your "camera man" can take some "pictures" of you inside the club tehe! I love DSLRs!
4am sleep, did I mention I love DSLRs.

SUNDAY: 9am, "yo dude start calling them muthaf--kas and wake em up, make sure we get this last location in, and call them trifling ass h--s and make sure they bring their nasty asses out to the shoot today!" Not in those words but he knew that's how I ment it!
11am call time at the night club. Just me, the artist, the dancer, the dancer's aunt and the artist's best friend's girlfriend sitting outside a locked club in an empty parking lot.
1130 am, Hey this door is real flimsy, we could just break in and tell em we thought they left it open for us...
12pm Soooooo... good thing we rolled in here last night with the camera... yep... is that?... "no just my phone dying"... better put it on the charger... just incase...
1pm Well I need to get back to Houston and you've got people you need to cuss out.
 
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Very fine! Did you shoot 720 60 @ 1/120 for the club stuff slomo? Did you do anything special to get the horizontal flares or did they just happen? Please share your settings...It's a gr8 lolite look.
 
mhood said:
Very fine! Did you shoot 720 60 @ 1/120 for the club stuff slomo? Did you do anything special to get the horizontal flares or did they just happen? Please share your settings...It's a gr8 lolite look.
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Thnx
Yeah the club was all handheld 720p with a 50mm 1.8 wide open. The ISO was 1600 and the shutter was 1/100, just for that little extra bit of light.
If you mean the horizontal flares in the club is just the rolling shutter and the strobes and other flashing light units, it's a flaw technically but I thought it looked cool :)
The horizontal flares in the performance set is just Magic Bullet Anamorphic Flares. I'm kinda of addicted to flares and back lighting and will get plenty of hate mail for over using it in my videos I'm sure :(
 
mhood said:
Thks! OMT: What were your picture settings on the camera? Again, it's a very nice look.
Click to expand...

Basically I've been shooting "Neutral" on my 7D and T1i. I'm gonna try "Standard" next with sharpness 0, contrast -4, saturation -1, color tone -1. I saw that being used on the clip which compares the 7D, GH1 and Red and really like it.

The performance scenes were shot with the zoom lenses. The 28-135 is decently sharp but really gets contrasty if you underexpose. The 18-55 sucks donkey b---s, some people think it's good enough, it's just too soft for me. Fortunately I got the 17-55 shortly after the shoot and it's awsome, of course at 5 times the price of the 18-55 it better be something.
The ISOs were higher than I wanted, I really could have used faster lenses. I think I was anywhere between 640 and 1250 depending on how far I was zoomed in. f5.6 on the long end of those zooms is a killer. I am gonna love the constant f2.8 of the 17-55.
 
Hey Rakesh,

Good effort. Trying to wrangle great locations is hard, I'm inclined to believe this is true no matter where you live. =T

I saw the test footage you posted, but wanted to wait until you got up a full cut. While there are other things I could comment on, I just wanted to bring composition. Dancing (generally no matter which style) is action. In either, what the Dancer or Stuntman/fighter gets out of being in front of camera is being seen.

I really get a claustrophobic feeling looking at the compositions, with the Dancer especially, and I'm inclined to ask if it's alleviated by removing the faux 2.35:1 matte? Do you feel it's necessary for a music video like this? Not saying it isn't, just asking.

The other stuff just comes down to practice, just wanted to comment on that.

Thanks for sharing.
 
Kholi said:
Hey Rakesh,

Good effort. Trying to wrangle great locations is hard, I'm inclined to believe this is true no matter where you live. =T

I saw the test footage you posted, but wanted to wait until you got up a full cut. While there are other things I could comment on, I just wanted to bring composition. Dancing (generally no matter which style) is action. In either, what the Dancer or Stuntman/fighter gets out of being in front of camera is being seen.

I really get a claustrophobic feeling looking at the compositions, with the Dancer especially, and I'm inclined to ask if it's alleviated by removing the faux 2.35:1 matte? Do you feel it's necessary for a music video like this? Not saying it isn't, just asking.

The other stuff just comes down to practice, just wanted to comment on that.

Thanks for sharing.
Click to expand...
Yeah I wrestled with using the wider shots, I have a bunch of takes that work better for dance (even with 2.35) but when I started editing I just didn't want it to look like a dance video anymore. I think maybe because I lost a lot of the shots I imagined form the other locations we missed? I talked to the artist first before abandoning the dance feel. In the end I wanted something that had dance in it but was more "hood." Just felt I didn't have what was in my head to do a badass dance video with the clips I had and morphed it into a hybrid dance/hood-ish performance.
Thnx for checking it out man.
I've got a ways to go yet, but I'm learning and having a good time :)

EDIT: In a nutshell I had bigger visions for this video, so I went in a different direction when I couldn't get my locations :( But everything happens for a reason and I'm still very happy with what it turned out to be

Feel free to tell me any other issues you think I'm having, I would really love your insight, might shorten my path to where I wanna get
 
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Johnny Cola said:
Yeah I wrestled with using the wider shots, I have a bunch of takes that work better for dance (even with 2.35) but when I started editing I just didn't want it to look like a dance video anymore. I think maybe because I lost a lot of the shots I imagined form the other locations we missed? I talked to the artist first before abandoning the more dance feel. In the end I wanted something that had dance in it but was more "hood." Just felt I didn't have what was in my head to do a badass dance video with the clips I had and morphed it into a hybrid dance/hood-ish performance.
Thnx for checking it out man.
I've got a ways to go yet, but I'm learning and having a good time :)

EDIT: In a nutshell I had bigger visions for this video, so I went in a different direction when I couldn't get my locations :( But everything happens for a reason and I'm still very happy with what it turned out to be
Click to expand...


I hope my post didn't make you feel as though your effort wasn't enough. That's not the purpose, which is just to throw ideas and thoughts out there so that next time they're swimming around in your head.

I can understand abandoning the original vision in favor of something new due to the restraints of what you may or may not have acquired, a totally plausible conclusion. Did you pre-matte for 2.35:1 or was that a separate decision in post?

One major thing that's always stuck with me since I first got my ass ripped by a well-known (around here, anyway) working DP/Director was to "Commit" immediately. What I mean by that is that when you go to compose, you commit to the composition and it is exactly what it is.

The frames that I bring up in your video would be the Wides that you went to grab. Even though the Dancer is no longer a major player in theory-- because you're going for a different feel-- he still appears on screen with the Artist. Sometimes his head gets chopped in odd places, and especially in the wides. His face is getting cropped at the eyes and it begins to feel alien. It's not because he IS an alien, but because the composition feels "uncommited".

Not to say that it's BAD, but looks unintentional or "simply placed" which we both know isn't the case.

So, the idea is that compositions may benefit from commitment (unlike relationships; yikes) subconciously. When you watch a feature and there's suddenly an off frame, it's my belief that there was some sort of compromise and suddenly a discrepancy with commitment to the frame. The MOST prevalent example of this can be seen in the modern television show, because productions are moving to wider formats and still having to compose for 4:3 as well. So if you see the show in a 4:3 space the compositions begin to get wide and it's subconciously distracting when dialog delivery between two characters comes into play. Watch HOUSE, you'll see.

Now, I'm not trying to convince you to change anything, this feedback stuff is a hairy subject and I learned that a LONG time ago from DVXFests... I do hope that it's generating some thought that'll hang around for your next shoot.
 
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LOL You actually picked up on it perfectly LMAO

I was shooting for 1.78, I've been doing a crap load of 2.35 music videos (just easy to make the client think their **** looks cinematic without trying too hard) and thought I needed a break and this video needed the headroom for the action. When I changed course to get a darker vibe, the 2.35 just played into it well. Of course a lot of the shots weren't gonna work but I figured I would just push the frame up or down in the matte to maintain the rappers headspace or chinspace. Definitly the dancer pays the price in some shots cause he's almost a foot shorter than the rapper :(
And man I also feel bad for the dancer, I made him work his ass off, and didn't really use it. AND he was still recovering from the flu and downing cough drops like a kid at holloween. I'm gonna have to show him love and give him a string of cameos in some higher profile videos. Poor guy, his name is Carlos and as soon as I get his last name I need to put his credit on the Vimeo page.

Thnx for the feedback bro!
 
No problem.

Here's a tip: if you frame for 2.35:1 to begin with, it looks fine in a 1.78:1 even if you don't drop a faux matte. The inverse of that generally doesn't hold so true.

Shoot it up!
 
Kholi said:
No problem.

Here's a tip: if you frame for 2.35:1 to begin with, it looks fine in a 1.78:1 even if you don't drop a faux matte. The inverse of that generally doesn't hold so true.

Shoot it up!
Click to expand...

That's damn good advice :)
Never thought about it, thnx
 
The club stuff looks fantastic and even though your plans went out the window the video still has a really good vibe.

Also the first time through I didn't really notice the dancer's head being cropped as much as it was in certain spots until Kholi mentioned it (since I was just really into the video) so that's a good sign. Normally I'm picking things apart all over if something doesn't grab me, so your video is pretty solid even with a few odd crop issues at the moment.

Nice job JC.
 
Thnx a lot man!
The artist had been forwarding all the txts he's been getting from the people out there. I guess they believe in him now!!! Hopefully I can salvage the overall concept for the next one :)
Hard to find rappers that wanna do more than just stand around and look mean in their videos.
 
ydgmdlu said:
Ah, so you finally finished it. Great job!
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Yeah FINALLY, lip sync was hard cause he didnt practice like I asked him to. 125% doesnt look like much of an overcrank but audibly and rythmically it's a lot faster. Some of the takes I used arent even the ones I like the best but the ones that sync the best :(
But over all I'm very happy with the results. Not sure I'm gonna use the T1i for anything other than stills though now that the 7D is here :)
 
I like this one. The music wasn't my style but I appreciate the work that went into it. I also say you used the format of the 7D to the max and got a great look out of it, nice job. I like the 2.35:1 but I agree with Kholi on how it looks a little claustrophobic. Some shots were REALLY cool with it, but maybe mixing it up with some more of the wider shots or getting some medium shots.

Didn't affect me that much though. I liked it.
 
Hey Johnny, that is a sick video. I' am convincing my self to get me a 7D and your stuff is making it easier. Glad to see H-Town producing good work.
 
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