Just for fun I thought I'd walk through the process of making a multi-location music video through several posts. I hope to cover all the way from conception to the final product and release. Join me in this project. Let me know your thoughts and suggestions. This is (as is everything I do) complete gorilla style productions. (usually) No budget at all.. except maybe for pizza and tacos for the crew.

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Part 1: Making Complicated Man

Complicated Man is a track from my new album. The album itself is a themed album, a timeline of me and my mate's long life to gather, a history of love. Complicated man is a song that reflects on young love, the infatuation period. That's the video we will study. But I won't get into day one until the next post... first a brief history of the Music Gorilla way of life.

A Broad Overview Of My Process

I've made (I think) about 20-25 music videos. Some big productions some very small. Some costing money but most as close to free as I could get.

I'll give a few examples of the different types of productions and also my own PERSONAL philosophy of music videos and how they fit into the working musician's life. I don't count camera's in my budget because I have plenty.. but no worries. I rarely use my cameras any more, I'll talk about that later on.

Let's start with The History Of A Budget Rock Star

The philosophy with a little history: I somehow escaped making music videos all of my career and still did pretty damn good for a regional artist. My career started in 1992, quite a while back! There were plenty of opportunities to make videos all through those years, mostly college students wanting credits, or small production companies. But.. the quality I could get from students and production companies back then was so bad that I always thought the videos might do more harm than good. I kept with this all the way up to around 2010 where I realized the fact that people were moving away from listing to music or albums and would eventually only find music through visual means. So I made a damn music video.

My very first ones I don't have any more... but this was a very early one. Made with one of the early GoPro cameras.. just me, in my house, with I'm sure a pirated ADOBE premiere copy.

If I Didn't Know God Is Good

God Is Good One of my first videos.

I made this with light setups from home depot ( a US Home Improvement store) using shop lights.. each costing around $3 dollars.. plus the bulbs.

Walmart shop light great for production lighting depending on bulb

Road To Zion

A More Expensive Video

On Road To Zion I, for the first time, rented a green screen studio for a day. It set me back I think around $300 just for the studio. I might have also paid for some lighting and props. The entire video cost around $400 to make. This was just an experiment. I actually had a green screen in my home (by painting a wall green) but it was their expansive 20-foot tall wrap-around green-screen I wanted along with their dolly and lighting.

Everybody Leaves - The Most Expensive and the biggest fail yet

On this production, I shot an entire live concert, plus did it all to ANALOG tape, plus had 14 people on stage. What was I thinking??

It was a nightmare and my worst fail in video land. This one I blew everything I had on, including I think my mortgage payment. And it all went to sh*t really quick.

I had hired one 'pro' videographer, he didn't show, didn't even call to cancel. My two prosumer friends who have helped on many productions got confused, in the end, I only had one camera angle, and no one managing the cameras.

So I had to get inventive on how to make these interesting. Luckily the camera the 'Pro' was supposed to be on - on stage - was at least turned on, though it was pointed at the floor most of the night.

Even still I got a few angles of my beautiful 'congregation' singing. But none of the actual audience.

This production reinforces a personal philosophy I have about the music video and its place in m music life, I'll share that now.

I Got Into Music To Make Music, Not Videos

Sadly, and I do mean sadly – The album is gone. So is the experience of listing to music as the EVENT. It's a visual world now. A $free world. You either adjust or accept your studio time as just a very expensive hobby. The video is a must.

But still... I refuse to let anything in my music career capitalize my time above music itself. If I were to do so, then I might as well go get a marketing job at a desk. The music career today is so complex so unimaginably convoluted that it is a war I must fight every single day not to become a 'Video producer,' Or a 'Marketing Director' instead of a person dedicated to making music.

If I drop my guard even one day, I'll look up and a month has passed making memes, booking, blogs, videos, talking to fans, networking and lo' n' behold – absolutely no music made.

Some say that you have to balance all this, and I say f*ck balance! My ship should be completely lopsided with the weight of what I LOVE doing with my time. All these things, marketing, networking and music videos etc, I make my bitches. That is the gorilla way. 'They' (marketing, networking videos; all appendages of the music business) are the 'afterthought', MUSIC is the 'THOUGHT'.

My inner gratification is more important than any fame or notoriety in music. In fact, my inner gratification is the sign of true success in all things.

And so that is my philosophy .. music is the THOUGHT. It is the thing that all the money goes into, all the time, all the tears, all the screaming, and ripping of flesh and bone, all else is the afterthought. Music is important, all else is urgent and not important. So in this way of doing things, music videos must be cheap, fast, YET do what they are intended to do.

This means that I have to do the one thing I am not very good at, get organized, get efficient, get smart and get off my ass and dig a grave (haha.. that is referring to the 6-foot deep grave I dug for the video below – One man.

For this shoot, I dug the grave.. and then we also had the actor (Scott Romack) start a new grave so we could show a process. (In the middle of August in TEXAS!!!Holy Cow-Hot.)

Sometimes you got to dig a grave.

One Man Is one of my favorites as far as the look and theme.

Making music videos IS the afterthought, YET it being effective is very important and is actually a difficult and a multifaceted job.

Efficient thinking and planning is one thing, but also relationship is maybe the most important thing. I can not do these alone.

You can only ask a friend to help so often, at some point it needs to become beneficial for everyone involved. That can manifest in many ways, for some of my camera people, it is beneficial in the way that they need showpieces, really good ones to help them in their career; for friends and fans it can be beneficial as just being something exciting to do and a blast of a fun time – every time – when it's not a blast of a fun time, you probably won't hear from that friend at the next shout out for help. That's the 'relationship' part; you have to know WHY each individual 'gorilla' :) even wanted to be a part of 'YOUR' project. If in doubt, as them then give them that.

In order to win relationships like this, your work needs to be like Stanley Kubrick – though-with-no-money, a-blindfold-on, and all-limbs-tied-behind-his-back – good! I joke..I'm in no way in his universe, but what I mean by that is that Stanley was all in. His work ethic was impeccable.

He took ALL responsibly upon himself. He even typed the 'All work no play ...bad boy' papers for the Shining himself!

image from collative learning

ALL RESPONSIBILITY IS YOURS, NOT THE DRUMMER's NOT YOUR BUDDY WITH A CAMERA

a. BLAME: You, the instigator, the 'Artist'; all the blame belongs to you on a video shoot. If somethings not getting done, it's your fault. You never blame anyone, you never mistreat anyone. They are at a party, and they should always feel like that. This forces you to work so hard that you pass out after the shoot, but also forces you to get very creative & authentic in how you structure situations and productions.

b. FAME: That brings in the second part.. all the FAME belongs to those who helped. You basically want to give up your credits.. if you shot most of it.. still give the credit to the friend that shot with you. If you produced it, but you had a volunteer help produce it, then put a co-producer, or better yet just give them the producer title. This is not always possible, but should be a goal: Make your crew shine.

Remember, you are concerned with making music, not becoming a video producer, let someone else who wants to get the cheers when possible.

Though, In the end.. it has to be as good as you can possibly pull off with what you have. So you might end up hurting some feelings. That's okay too... your not a therapist or a nursery either. Never make a choice in the video, or music production (for sure) to save someone's feelings. That's part of it being good and effective and efficient .. you can't let people's bad ideas and feelings get in the way of it being good. You have to take the control in the end.

You'll have time to patch things up later... hopefully they are so impressed by the final product and their credit on it that they won't care that you cut out their great idea. And more hopeful, that you have created something, a memory, a fun time etc that they can cherish through life.

Day One - Complicated man >> In The Next Post

On the next post, we'll jump into what day one looked like, which was mostly Idea gathering.

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Hi, I'm Ezra Vancil A Texas Americana Artist and sometimes painter, writer and chills cook-off champ. Follow me on @ezravan and also help get me started on the NEW music blockchain app musicoin

The credits on these are long.. I will drop in Siouxsie Romack and Benney Keys as videographers on most of these.. see the full credits on each video.