A venezuelan music video shooted completely with an iPhone 5s, and vertically?

When I started on Steemit, my first post was promoting my most recent music video, it was "Cantaclaro" by the artist Lasca (no, it's not me, it's my brother, Chapis Lasca, who decided to take our surname as a trademark, so, the music videos that I make to him are: a music video of Lasca directed by Vadim Lasca).

One of the posters of "Cantaclaro"

The post passed without glory, like almost all the first posts that everyone usually does, among other reasons because I only put the link to the video and did not explain anything about the process of making or anything about it.

Today, several months later, celebrating that our music video has been Official Selection at the Winter Film Awards of NYC and at the Dhaka International Mobile Film Festival in Bangladesh, I think it is a great moment to talk about this interesting project we did, now explaying better how was every part of the process.

My brother (best known for being bassist and founder of the venezuelan band Malanga, and currently playing bass with Gaélica, besides being a renowned music producer, winner of several Grammy awards, among others) had already released an album called "Un mar de calma (A sea of calm)", to wich we made three music videos, one of them, "Tocando el Sol (Touching the sun)" was awarded internationally in Film and Music Video Festivals. When he finished recording his second LP, called "0", he met with me to plan his audiovisual strategy. "0" is a very complex album, intense, difficult to digest, interesting without a doubt, and with an amazing musical level (you can download it, like "A sea of calm", for free from its website lasca.com.ve)

Cover of "0" (with permission of use by the artist)

It was difficult, because of the type of music, to decide which song would be the first "single" of the album, because the little commercial nature of the material. The same thing made us rethink the idea of how to promote the album on an audiovisual level and we decided to start working with "Cantaclaro", a song that states that we have failed as a society, and, based on this premise, we planned make a work on video, more artistic, strong and critical possible, that will go along with this idea.

Film Slate

I decided then to tell four stories, with a fifth story that would be the audiovisual technique that I proposed for the piece.

Darli Fruggiero inside the iPhone

Beginning by the end, for this fifth story that I mentionned. While it was an independent video, and financial resources were scarce, we had the help of various rentals in Caracas, as well as great professionals willing to work in adventures like these, not to mention the actor friends who constantly ask me to do things like that, just for the sake of having better and more interesting pieces in their work folders. But while the story was being structured, I decided to turn the project around (literally) and I proposed to film it completely with my own iPhone 5s and in vertical format, with the premise that, in a first stage, it could only be seen on mobile devices through a direct link that does not work on computers. Why that? Because as a filmmaker I had been against the increasingly common videos filmed in vertical format, and doing that I'll could propose a manifesto, as part of the criticisms I had in the narrative of the video, in addition to the "dictatorial" concept of obliging the viewer to watch our video through the devices that we wanted, and in a unique format that we proposed that was the vertical reproduction. A final factor was the challenge that posed for all of us to think, design, frame and even post produce in this new format for us.

Image of the editing timeline of "Cantaclaro"

The rest of the concepts that would become the stories that complement the video would be: the Military Power as a mechanism of absolute control (something that we know very well in Venezuela), Religion as an entity of manipulation, the absurd Beauty canons imposed through sickly patterns and the over-sexualitation of youngs through social networks.
Yes, not an easy to digest music video.

Preparing the First Set with Daniela Bueno and Gian Carlo Ferrini

While I was trying to find some actor friends who would get the risk of being involved in the project (taking into account the political moment that Venezuela was living in 2017, and the repercussions that "Cantaclaro" could have), the process of testing format and apps to be used with my cellphone began. To summarize a bit this more technical part, I chose to shoot everything with the FiLMiC Pro app, since it allowed me to work at 24 fps, control each of the camera's values manually and take more advantage of the format of the recorded material.

Source

Meanwhile Ylich Orsini (@ylich) (our uncle and programmer), was working on the programming of my brother's website to achieve the video, in the first instance, to be only seen on mobile devices, as I mentioned before.

My brother and I in the middle of shooting

Fortunately the locations were all in the house of one of the Executive Producers of the project, Pata Medina.

Locations

Finally I managed to work with great and admired friends actors. All of them beautiful people, with a unique talent, super known names in my country who managed to transmit exactly what I had in mind from the first moment.

Surrounded by some of the actors, next to the Executive Producer Mariale Fleitas (@marialefleitas) and my Assistant Director María Ruiz

Once the music video was ready, we began an intrigue campaign for twelve days, with one video for each of the actors just screaming to camera. Following this, my brother and I began a media tour on radio and press to give more details of this "strange" video that we decided to shoot.
Since its launch, "Cantaclaro" have had a very interesting impact, even being reviewed on Bilboard magazine.

Filming actor Ali Rondón

With Victoria Bozo in front of the mirror

And now that the first two Film Festivals in which we are Official Selection are approaching, I want to invite you again to watch "Cantaclaro" (if you can watch it on a mobile device would be much better). Be aware, the music video contains strong images not suitable for everyone. Discretion is advised.

I do not want to finish writing this post without sharing with you the crew list that managed to make this very personal project come true:

Cast:
Daniela Bueno
Gian Carlo Ferrini
Alí Rondón
Victoria Bozo
Adolfo Nittoli
Karina Velásquez
Stephanie Cardone
Ricardo Lira
Ruth Cabeza
Gonzalo Guerrero
Scarlett Pestana
Darli Fruggiero
Jorge Melo
Julio Cesar Marcano

Directed by Vadim Lasca
Executive Producer: Pata Medina
Executive Producer Albur: Mariale Fleitas
Director of Photography: Gustavo Mora
Art Director and Costumes: Luis Fernando Flores
Director's Assistant: María Ruiz
Makeup Artist an FX: Graziela Da Silva
Edition: Vadim Lasca
Color: Gema de La Cruz
VFX: Wilfredo Oviedo, Vadim Lasca
Field Producer: Francisco Arrioja
Production Assistants: Mariana Dinar, Iker Orsini
Gaffer: Jhonatan Cabrera
Catering: Pata Home Made

An Albur's Production

Filmed completely on iPhone 5s with FiLMiC Pro

Thanks for stopping by!

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All the images are mine, taken by several people of the project with a Canon 7D.
The logos and laurel of the Festivals are used with authorization of them for being Official Selection.

PS: There is no charge for comments

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@vadimlasca
http://www.vadimlasca.com