Jean with clapper

The call came about a month ago from the promotion company the band had hired, "We need somebody to shoot a hip-hop music video and you were recommended."

I told him that he probably shouldn't leave his wallet within reach of whoever made that recommendation! I explained that we are over sixty years old, have never shot any kind of music video, and believed that hip-hop should be banned, their fans forced to listen to Natalie Cole and Sarah Brightman for twenty-four hours straight and all hip-hop and rap performers should be incarcerated.

A nervous chuckle at the other end... "So you'll do it then?"

I gave him our rates and told him I would need a one thousand dollar deposit to reserve the date. I was a little surprised when a PayPal notification showed that the deposit had been paid.

I sent him a link to our storyboard form and gave him instructions on how to detail each shot of each scene. I asked which format - wide or standard and which delivery method. I told him to send me a text file of the lyrics and either the actual cd or wav file of the track we would be shooting the video for. I also asked whether we would need to bring a teleprompter or greenscreen.

After two weeks of nagging for this info, I finally received the following -

• a three page very generalized explanation of the shoot
• a cda file of the track
• "What is a 'teleprompter'?"
• "What is a greenscreen'?"

Well, a cda file only tells the computer where to find the data on the cd, it contains no music. The generalized scene list was not in the format I had provided and was too generic to be used as a shot list.

The promoter's inexperience was becoming obvious.

I told the promoter that I would need to communicate directly with the band to get the information I needed, but he refused, saying that our contact was to be solely with him and he specifically stated that he did not want the band aware of our financial arrangements.

I assured him that we would never discuss financial details with others, but I needed more detailed information to ensure a good shoot. Due to delay in responding to emails, it was now just two days before the shoot, so I offerred to arrive early enough to meet with the band in the evening and get the info for our storyboard / shot list (on our own time!), but he never responded to our email.

The day of the shoot, we arrived an hour early, hoping to finally get some shot list info. Thankfully, the group was there and they were very cooperative, but within an hour the promoter arrived and he was anxious to get started. (please click the "Read more" link..)

I explained that every minute spent in finishing the storyboard would result in several minutes saved in the field and result in a much better video, but it was no use.

I had to wonder if the promoter felt I was trying to pad our hours with airconditioned time, instead of in-the-field shooting time, so we began shooting.

Since I had managed to get details on some of the earliest shots, I expected that those would go fairly well, but even there we ran into some problems.

If this had been a true "event" video, all would have been well, but this was a staged video where every detail needed to be analyzed for its affect on the intended mood and theme of the song.

I assigned the promoter the job of "director" and "continuity person", as I had explained in my emails, because the camera people would be watching for technical things in their tiny 2" lcds, it would be his job to watch and ensure that we had the right people, the lyrics, expressions, etc. for each shot.

It was already hot by nine-thirty in the morning and the band members were passing around a blue towel for wiping sweat. We never noticed, peering into those tiny Canon lcds, but the band leader - the guy who did the shot list and who should have known better, was waving that towel around as they danced and sang.

What wasn't noticable in our lcds is very noticable on our widescreen tv. Out of three takes, only the last take didn't have the towel waving around. Thankfully, the fact that we used three cameras and at the end, we got a greenscreen shot of the lead singer doing the whole song - these things saved us.

The promoter had one of those little twenty-five dollar jam boxes, and he would queue up the right part of the song for them to synch to for each shot. Well, for most shots. For the fourth shot, he accidentally played the part for the fifth shot. (How do you fix THAT in post?)

By two in the afternoon, we'd shot through the lunch period and everyone was hot and tired. Now you'd figure that the sixty-two year old guy who had to unload a car load of video gear, assemble, then break down a camera crane and tripod for each of the five locations we'd shot by then - you'd figure that the ninety-five degree sun might have worn him out (and it almost did), but it was the rest of the group, who kept wanting breaks and who'd seemingly begun to lose the will to continue.

Scene after scene, they would often say "Let's skip that, just use the greenscreen shot instead."

Oh yeah, the greenscreen. The same greenscreen that they never answered whether we'd need it or not. To save time loading and unloading at each location, I brought only the gear we would need and left the teleprompter and greenscreen behind. (If they didn't even know what it was, how were we going to need it?)

The opening scene called for a shoot in the lead singer's livingroom. But this was an older house with a livingroom about the size of a modern small bedroom. I'd gone up the steps carrying tripod, big H1a camera, and studio light kit, took one glance inside and realized that all this gear would never fit.

I did this scene with just a handheld VX2100, wide lens and available light. Performer and child were getting tired and I knew I'd have to do the two takes right the first time. One take was from over "dad's" shoulder and the other from over the son's shoulder. I was amazed at how well the little boy did. When I was that age, I'd probably been kicking and screaming to get the heck out of there and let me play!

It was at about this point that they (band and promoter) suddenly had the idea for me to come up with a bunch of animations and effects to cover the holes in the shooting. I told them that I doubt this could be done very well, especially considering that I am not really a professional animator, but this didn't seem to faze them.

The graveyard scene was another one they were going to skip when they saw a chain around the gate. I was getting a little miffed by then and walked up to the gate and, utilizing some of the skills learned in my repo-man days, in seconds I had the chain off the gate.

I thought it was a little ironic that a sixty-year-old white guy had to show young, black, "gangstas" how to break into a place! They all seemed to keep a better eye on their belongings when I came near, after that!

Back at their "studio" (a former gas station / used car lot), someone found an old blue bed sheet and we setup for our chroma shots. I'd brought the lighting kit and Jean stretched all the wrinkles she could out of the sheet.

Although we implored the lead singer to actually, really, really, "sing", he mostly lip-synched or perhaps sang very quietly, and it shows in the final video. It especially shows where, at a couple points he apparently forgot some of the words, and the lyrics blare out of the boom box while his lips aren't moving at all. Again, these were things we didn't notice while peering into our two-inch lcd's and apparently the promoter didn't notice them either.

Fix it in post!

To his credit, the lead singer was a natural-born actor. His facial expressions throughout the video and in the mailbox scene make a huge difference in the final video.

At the end, one of the guys' girlfriends came up with an idea to end the video with father and son walking away, hand-in-hand.  Everyone agreed it was a great idea, but everyone was hot, tired and pretty much worn out by this time and we had to talk them into going through with it.

We did get a few good shots.  I got to do one of those rural mailbox shots where the camera appears to be inside the mailbox; the lid opens; a face peers in, then a hand reaches and retrieves the mail. I was afraid we wouldn't get two takes on it, due to the heat and people getting worn out, so I (regretably) used auto-exposure, but at least it's usable footage.

I think the band has a lot of potential and this is a really good song, but they'll need an experienced person to guide them - someone who truly has their interest at heart. And I think they're going to need more than that - they'll need to have determination and self-discipline. As with most of us, that may prove to be their biggest hurdle.

I've got the music video posted at: http://www.okvideoproductions.com/drbr/

Please remember that I didn't have a thing to do with the audio - not even the opening dialog!

Which is too bad, considering the dialog is poorly mic'd and their music is totally clipped and somewhat distorted. We implored them to send an editable music file so we could improve the quality, but all the promoter would give us is an mp3!

In a follow-up article, I'll show some editing tricks that fixed problems like -

• auto-focus problems
• framing issues
• hiding image problems
• creating custom animations
• using third-party effects, compositions and animations
• ..and more