Here is our new music video. NSFW!!!!
Before anyone wonders, no it is not technically impressive. We did what we could but it was all done quickly (relatively speaking) in available light (including the venue) and fairly low-tech.
This was shot over quite a few days, two longer ones (8 hours and maybe 5-6 hours), and a bunch of shorter (40 minutes) ones near my old apartment on the singer's lunch breaks. We shot it all ourselves, either locked off or myself or the singer shooting depending on which of us needed to be in the shot (I'm the guitar player/driver). C100 in wide DR is probably the majority (Canon 24-105, Canon 17-55, Canon 70-200, and Tokina 11-16 lenses), but there is quite a bit of GoPro and the group riding shots are the 5D (colleague/friend shot with gimbal, while another friend drove vehicle). GoPro was mounted to back of a vehicle for the solo wide riding shots, either myself or singer driving. If anyone wants to know, the magic speed for this seems to be the vehicle driving at 10-12 mph, slower and you're slowing yourself down to avoid hitting the car, faster and you're dying trying to keep up (super athletes aside).
Toy shots were to avoid either dangerous or insanely time consuming (if going a not dangerous route) stunt shots. Was planning on doing an animated photo thing for those parts (like South Park models but photos instead of virtual construction paper), but this approach felt more "us", and I think has more charm. The figures are some GI Joe knockoff from Walmart called "The C.O.R.P", painted with model paint. Made SUV and houses out of foamcore, little bike from Hobby Lobby or something. Mildly amusing story...stayed up all night before first shoot day doing the houses/figures, didn't end up having time to do them that day. So that was about 40 sleepless hours for nothing.
I made my costume, backdrop at the venue, edited it and "graded" it. Edited in FCPX, tried to grade there too but learned about the issue with quicktime/gamma shifting, so restarted in DaVinci Resolve. Spent an insane amount of time on the grade, ended up doing a lot of power window frame-by-frame stuff, sometimes for entire shots, 'cause I couldn't find another way to isolate certain colors/ranges from each other. Jumping off point for the looks (there are quite a few different styles here) was late 90s/early 2000s pop punk videos (a la the style of the song). I didn't quite get there...I was too afraid to push the highlights and blacks the way they did on those vids, being that I don't have a pro monitoring setup. Based on looking at the video on Vimeo via phone, laptop, Ipad Mini, and maybe another device occasionally, I pushed it as far as I felt comfortable. Some of that's also the lack of real lighting...you can crush and clip when the important parts are lit correctly...if not, you end up crushing and clipping the critical areas (or at least that was my experience). Lots of minor "relighting" in DaVinci, some vignettes and things. STill only have the lite version.
I am happy with it but realize it could have been done better in a few ways. There was only ever a loose plan of how it would all cut together. We definitely overshot (there are entire shots/angles that never made it in at all), but on the other hand, some of the stuff I used came from having all the extra takes. So...? For the next ones I want to try to make a "mock" edit...download stuff from youtube or wherever, stock photos, etc., use those as stand-ins for shots we plan, edit that over the actual song, to see how it would cut together. I feel this'll help me know what to spend more time on/less time on/not do at all. The editing is a little frantic, but I went back and forth for about 3 weeks and this is where it ended up. Pretty short song and we got so much that I wanted to "honor" it all as much as possible.
Before anyone wonders, no it is not technically impressive. We did what we could but it was all done quickly (relatively speaking) in available light (including the venue) and fairly low-tech.
This was shot over quite a few days, two longer ones (8 hours and maybe 5-6 hours), and a bunch of shorter (40 minutes) ones near my old apartment on the singer's lunch breaks. We shot it all ourselves, either locked off or myself or the singer shooting depending on which of us needed to be in the shot (I'm the guitar player/driver). C100 in wide DR is probably the majority (Canon 24-105, Canon 17-55, Canon 70-200, and Tokina 11-16 lenses), but there is quite a bit of GoPro and the group riding shots are the 5D (colleague/friend shot with gimbal, while another friend drove vehicle). GoPro was mounted to back of a vehicle for the solo wide riding shots, either myself or singer driving. If anyone wants to know, the magic speed for this seems to be the vehicle driving at 10-12 mph, slower and you're slowing yourself down to avoid hitting the car, faster and you're dying trying to keep up (super athletes aside).
Toy shots were to avoid either dangerous or insanely time consuming (if going a not dangerous route) stunt shots. Was planning on doing an animated photo thing for those parts (like South Park models but photos instead of virtual construction paper), but this approach felt more "us", and I think has more charm. The figures are some GI Joe knockoff from Walmart called "The C.O.R.P", painted with model paint. Made SUV and houses out of foamcore, little bike from Hobby Lobby or something. Mildly amusing story...stayed up all night before first shoot day doing the houses/figures, didn't end up having time to do them that day. So that was about 40 sleepless hours for nothing.
I made my costume, backdrop at the venue, edited it and "graded" it. Edited in FCPX, tried to grade there too but learned about the issue with quicktime/gamma shifting, so restarted in DaVinci Resolve. Spent an insane amount of time on the grade, ended up doing a lot of power window frame-by-frame stuff, sometimes for entire shots, 'cause I couldn't find another way to isolate certain colors/ranges from each other. Jumping off point for the looks (there are quite a few different styles here) was late 90s/early 2000s pop punk videos (a la the style of the song). I didn't quite get there...I was too afraid to push the highlights and blacks the way they did on those vids, being that I don't have a pro monitoring setup. Based on looking at the video on Vimeo via phone, laptop, Ipad Mini, and maybe another device occasionally, I pushed it as far as I felt comfortable. Some of that's also the lack of real lighting...you can crush and clip when the important parts are lit correctly...if not, you end up crushing and clipping the critical areas (or at least that was my experience). Lots of minor "relighting" in DaVinci, some vignettes and things. STill only have the lite version.
I am happy with it but realize it could have been done better in a few ways. There was only ever a loose plan of how it would all cut together. We definitely overshot (there are entire shots/angles that never made it in at all), but on the other hand, some of the stuff I used came from having all the extra takes. So...? For the next ones I want to try to make a "mock" edit...download stuff from youtube or wherever, stock photos, etc., use those as stand-ins for shots we plan, edit that over the actual song, to see how it would cut together. I feel this'll help me know what to spend more time on/less time on/not do at all. The editing is a little frantic, but I went back and forth for about 3 weeks and this is where it ended up. Pretty short song and we got so much that I wanted to "honor" it all as much as possible.
