Settle Down & Get Exhausted - Making A Music Video Ep. 3

ezravancil (57)in #blog • 7 years ago (edited)

By the end of the video shoot day, I was crippled, exhausted and flat broke; ah! It was a good day.

We had a long-planned music video shoot last night. I directed the video and was the dude singing.. so, I'm pretty damn exhausted today so I won't go into any detailed tutorials on what we did. I'll just take account of the day and some of the planning and maybe something helpful will come about.

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start."– Charles Bukowski's Factotum

Settle Down & Get Exhausted

I like total and complete exhaustion. That feeling at the end of a big project where you're body revolts and your mind is broccoli and cheese casserole; that time when the work is over, and though your not even sure it was good or even worth it – but, have no doubt that you gave it every inch of energy you had. Those days, months and years that you went all the way. Past even the lines of safety, past even good advice, past consequences; into the realm of creative chaos. That's where you'll find it, that whispering muse.

Settle Down Good Music Video Shoot

The shoot last night was a beautiful dance of planning and controlled chaos. I almost don't feel like we're getting anything worth expressing, unless it descends into one of the higher levels of chaos. I've had several shoots go into complete chaos, and because this one had so many moving parts, this time around, I tightened up on my front end planning.

Locations

The shoot had 2 locations planned. The first in a car garage, the second in a field. I was trying to do something I've never done which was to shoot continually with the sun's light, using it as an element in the video, not just for lighting. Creating, in the final edit, an appearance of the light of sun going down, the video starting in light and ending in darkness. The sunlight is best in afternoon until twilight. I didn't want any mid-day light. Especially because at midday, at Location 2, the cameras would have seen the sun in the sky; giving away to the audience, that we had shot all day and then a night scene. I want it to feel like we're pulling up right before dusk, and playing once through a song as the sun goes down. Whether this works, I don't know, I haven't even looked at the footage, that was the idea though.

The Song Cues

In order to do this, I broke the song into three 'Cues.' the first Cue is the first minute of the song. The second Cue, the second chorus, and bridge. The 3rd Cue the outro to the song. This allowed us to 'Run,' the first part of the song over and over in its proper sun stage. And the 2nd & 3rd cue over and over in its proper sun stage. That might seem confusing, but if we ran the entire song over and over, there might be awesome endings of the song, but the light would be wrong. There might be an awesome bridge of the song when the sun had gone down over the trees, but then I would have to edit light and dark scenes together. So the sunlight would come on and off the whole song. So, the cue idea seemed to solve this, and keep each section of the song in its proper sun lighting. i.e. the beginning of the song (Cue 1) is shot from 3-4pm. The sun is heading into dusk for the bridge of the song (Cue 2), and we're just seeing moonlight on the end of the song (Cue 3).

The entire Location 2 shoot (In the field) was shot from 3:30 PM (we started late) until 6:45 PM. At that time the moon was coming up and there were some beautiful clouds. It started raining at 6:20 PM. It let a few minutes later so we decided to make a mad dash for one more run of the ending, while Cameraman 3 set up a 360 camera, and we ran the entire song in 360 for the last take.

The Crew

I had originally planned to have around 20 people in the scene. The day of the shoot, a few just didn't show up, and a few had the flu, so I think we have around 15 on camera.

Behind the camera, I had planned to have at least three on the ground and a drone pilot in the air. As well as some stationary cameras.

The Drone pilot never materialized and when I saw that we were running a half hour late on the first scene in location 1, I dropped the stationary camera idea on Location 2.

For the crew, I had three assistants planned and was hoping for more. 2 showed up. One DA (Directors Assistant) and one runner. Both were incredibly helpful. I've only had a Directors assistant on one other shoot, and from here out, it is a must.

The Set

The set was probably the biggest challenge. We wanted a real piano on the field. This turned out to be more work than expected. I spent two days up until the shoot trying to get a free piano from Craig's list and hall it there. There were plenty of free pianos, but could not get the help to haul it. I was dealing with a pretty bad back problem. In the end, I found a piano that someone loaned us. I tried to get help for moving it, but, no one volunteers for that kinda stuff. I ended up moving it with my brother. On location, some of the crew and actors helped get it off the trailer.

Set Build

The other set pieces were not even planned at all. I shot this at my brother's car shop. He collects old VW's. Over the days leading up to the shoot, it kind of organically arrived to use a few of his cars' headlights as our lighting. While on location, we decided to use a few for the backdrop. Some of these cars were worth more than I've made in a decade, so I was more cautious than I am known for. I talked to each person one on one and made sure they knew not to get too close to the cars and made one of the DA's jobs was to make sure the cars were unscathed.

Just a side note. I preach this all the time, and I don't always do it perfectly, but it can't be harped on enough. When you're doing DIY volunteer video shoots or any project for that matter, you leave everything as you found it, or better than you found it if possible. The relationship issues of not respecting peoples time and things will catch up with you.

Leading up to shoot - Planning

The date of the shoot was planned 2 months prior. The dancers needed time to learn some routines, the musicians needed to brush up, some of them needed to learn the song, note for note. We took a big chance putting it on Dec. 3rd and outdoors. Yet, this is Texas, you never know what the weather will be. You're pretty much taking a chance booking any outdoor event from November to March. We took a chance.

The Event and Volunteers

The main reason for a two month planning period though, is, to get people interested in helping. I started with only 4 people interested. My bass player, and piano player, a camera person and one of those people had a non-profit dance group that she felt she could interest. The entirety of the two months was gaining new volunteers. I always shoot for double of what I need unless I have locked in a good faith volunteer. Such as my DA, I knew she'd hold up to the deal, so I did not look for a backup.

When the shoot day came, I was pretty confident that 95% of the volunteers would show. I had been in contact with them regularly, both by email and by a Facebook event I created. When all said and done, I think that it was more like a 90% show, maybe a little less, but we made it through. That's just part of the game.

The shoot Plan

For our three 'cues,' I planned also three 'setups.' when shooting with few camera people, and with people you have not worked regularly with, I find the best plan is just flat out bulk-coverage. I planned to run this set up on each of the three Cues, and then three runs where I let the camera folks do their thing, whatever they wanted as long as their not shooting each other in the scene :) The plan worked for a little while. The first hour went by the plan, but the chaos started getting thicker as the sun descended. I dropped the plan and we went pretty much free form with the general idea of the plan still as a framework.

I find that planning is really more for the director to generate ideas. I'm ready to let go of the 'plan,' at any moment that I feel it's getting in the way of the flow of the shoot. which I did. For me, the planning stages really help me to generate small details about the shoot that I otherwise would not have thought of. Just sitting down with pen and paper, is quit time to think, which is not something we always give ourself; for that reason alone, I'm finding it's best to draw out ideas.

The Night Before for peaceful morning

I was directing, producing, acting in, some shooting, doing the audio, bringing all the equipment, the food, the scenery – you bet, I was up all night.

The most important thing for me is being calm the day of. I didn't want to be looking for a mini-jack cable right before I left for setup. All that has to happen the days before or I will be a mess. I want to wake up the day of, pray and meditate, drink some coffee, look at the birds, chat with my wife a bit and have a good peaceful mind ready to kick some chaos ass.

6:00 am to 9 am - Double checking equipment. Running to the store for a few things I remembered. Washed my truck (though it was to be in the shoot).
I arrived about 10 am. set up most of the scenery. Picked up a drum set. Checked on the piano. Went and looked at it to see if I could do it with my back issue.
Finally one of my assistants showed and between three of us we go the piano there at noon.
12:30 set up tables and chairs for the food area
1pm ran electricity to the field
1:30 ran lights.. none of them were working, so went and found some more LED lights in the shop.
I took a few minutes and put the song we were shooting in my headphones and walked around to get the right angles in my mind's eye.
1:30 pm we started pulling the backdrop cars in.
2:00 pm people started showing. I had the DA put the dancers and musicians to practice. I also wanted to see the whole group to understand more how to place the cars.
2:20 pm All kinds of things were going haywire, setting up the charging station, and card drop station (we didn't have enough cards to shoot on) DA & Runner helped a lot with this.
2:45 pm meetings with camera people. Meetings with dancers and musicians.
3:00 pm a quick scene in the garage shot
3:30 main shoot starts.

Controlled Chaos

You might think, why should there be chaos at all? Just plan it out. Put 25 volunteer people on a set, and call me afterward. There will be chaos. Be prepared for it. My best preparation for it all is to know that I will be doing most of the work, which I should be doing, it's my project. That I will be cleaning up, which I should. That I will be the only one broke at the end of it, which is only right. That I'm the only one to blame if anything goes wrong. The only thought I allow to come to my mind when someone cancels 30 minutes before, or something breaks, or any other of the 100 things that go wrong is: Complete and total Acceptance. Accept the situation and move on to what CAN be done to remedy it. I don't allow any thought to what 'would, could have, or should have,' only to what CAN be done right now. And there were some majorly disappointing cancelations last minute, there were some problems I wish I could have fixed. But on game day, you just play what is dealt. Several of the crew and even cast, that I thought would be there the whole shoot, needed to leave before the shoot was over – acceptance. My reply was, "Thank you so much for helping." My next thought was, how can we patch the hole.

It's a constant mindset of peaceful troubleshooting. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. As long as I did all I could; I'll sleep well.

End of night

At the end of the shoot, everyone was very helpful in getting the equipment safe. It has started sprinkling again after the 360 shoot. A few of the musicians stayed on to help get the piano in the trailer. We loaded cards onto a backup hardrive. It took an hour or so to break down. I was surprised at how many people stayed to help clean up. I figured it would be me and my wife and a few friends. It was a good thing because when I pulled the piano around back and jumped out of the truck, I realized the adrenaline was gone.; I felt my back give out. I wasn't even sure I could make it a block back to the field. The rest of the night I was hobbled. We somehow, got the piano back to its home. The drum set back to it's home. My bass player drove me home and I watched School Of Rock with my daughter. (Her first time seeing it).

Today there is a huge jumbled mess of chords and equipment in the studio I'll have to sort through and get back to normal. I'm going to head off to the bath; my wife has these baths for my back, she puts a bunch of stuff in there, Epson salts and other smelly thongs, that makes me feel better. – peace.

Thanks for reading! I'm an artist and musician from Texas, I play Americana type music. You can check it out, join the mailing list on ezravancil.com | If you like what you read REPOST, UPVOTE and follow @ezravancil

All these images for the post are shot by Siouxsie Romack hosted via ezravancil.com.
settle down good crew on location
Settle down good shoot