Getting In Sync!

Been spending the last few days meeting and greeting my new adopted doggie and when she sleeps I get time in between to sync the takes of the Edie Carey video for LOVE. Syncing takes is always the moment when you reacquaint yourself with what you just did. In my case this time it was holding my breath and making sure I had gotten everything.
After all we had three days blocked for filming. The first two were for primary filming and the third a weather day. As it turned out we got gorgeous light on evening one with less grand light forcast, so I made the command decision to get it all then. Was it an ok choice?
Looking at what I have here I am feeling like I did make the good call. We really rolled a lot of footage in that 3 hour light window. I am sure I will want to film a few transitional timelapses, but that's fine.
Much of a music video's energy and "story" comes through editing. This one is no exception. Color choices are also key. While I planned that to some extend there is always room to play. And to discover new things.
Edie did a great job preparing and giving me a lot to work with. I will share discoveries as I come upon them. Some of the joy of editing is in the accidental juxtaposing of images.
Okay, back to it! More soon!

On The Day

Filming is always a venture into the unknown... You can plan and prep but "On The Day" you must always adjust to what is. Yesterday we began, and probably completed the principle photography for Edie Carey's video LOVE. I say probably because Mother Nature is involved and basically she is in charge of our lighting department for this shoot. We hated to put her to work on Mother's Day but in spite of it all she delivered.

We had two full days and a rain date scheduled. But in her infinite wisdom Mother N decided to test our prowess by giving us almost two hours of spectacular light and she basically said"I dare you to try and get everything done". Having checked the modern oracle of the iphone I saw that this was going to be our best light window so our crew swung into action and we got great stuff.

Thanks to Chase, Quin and Ned for their great work... Lots of hurry up and prep and wait for light and then a scramble. I have a few more pickup and transitional shots to get but I think for the performance stuff Mother N won't be sending us any better opportunities... and in filming you have to jump on those moments!

I'll post a few more pics soon... Also it was my first shoot operating a steadicam... I need work on my operating on it to really be proficient but you've got to start somewhere. I think my handheld stuff was more dynamic but my 20 years expertise handholding vs two days practice on the steadicam makes a difference. Still that steadicam is amazing.

More soon! Thanks to a great crew, snappy camera assisting from Michele and Edie's patience and workability! Fun stuff...

Thanks to www.vintagebluesguitars.com!

We are only a week away from the EDIE CAREY/LOVE video shoot now and Edie has approved the concept. It is a simple one which echoes the elegant simplicity of the song itself.
In the song we are going to have Edie perform the verses three different ways, representative of three different phases of life, or three different points in the curve of one's maturity. I will not give away every element of the concept here but to say that her three selves will of course need three different guitars.
Since this concept will hinge on the details and not on any one flashy effect or big budget performance section we knew we would have to get across the differences in Edie in the three sections visually quite quickly and so having her perform on three different guitars seemed to be called for.
Our friends at www.vintagebluesguitars.com have sold collectible guitars to numerous famous performing artists, so who would know better about distinctive looks for Edie than these guys. Sure enough they had some great guitars in their inventory which we can use for the shoot, and by the way all of these beauties are currently available, although I think a call may have come in for one of them.
Listen to the song LOVE on the homepage of ediecarey.com and if you are a guitarist or instrument lover you really should check out vintagebluesguitars.com.
More soon, we are really gearing up now for this shoot!

I learned a great lesson on one of my early short films LANCASTER COUNTY 2020. I was shooting a section to music where the lyrics told of a futuristic carnival atmosphere in a song called AMISH WUNDERWORLT. The idea was that in 2020 there was this crazy wacky amusement park which was very exploitative of the Amish. There was a lyric that said "And for you thru the keyhole peerers, an Amish home with two way mirrors! Watch them sleep and watch them eating! What them pray in Sunday meeting!". This was to be a funhouse in the carnival where you could watch Amish people as an attraction.

Naturally this was beyond the capability of our budget (ZERO!) to pull off an actual Amish House populated with Amish people and a crowd watching them, but we did not know how to interpret this and did not want to lose the idea entirely, so what is a filmmaker to do?

Being in a jam often leads to a much better idea that is cost effective, do-able, less literal and much better anyway! I wound up shooting a crowd of onlookers with a fisheye lens and ten faces jammed all up at my lens looking at it. I used this visual under this whole section and it was so much more powerful than recreating the whole thing. At it's essence it was about the lookers, not the Amish funhouse. Problem solved! Budget intact! BETTER IDEA!

So I didn't panic when my first idea for the Edie Carey LOVE video ran into a glitch. I had looked into the possibility of getting one of our fabulous local opera houses (Fulton, Strand) for a performance section. I had some things in mind to make it a bit more than straightforward, but it would have been a simple lovely location to film... but in many ways not that creative.

Those theaters are pretty booked up and this video we are filming is low budget. Rentals on those buildings weren't in the plan and especially rentals where we load in and rush our filming, trimming the good ideas from the shot list to make it happen on their timetable. There is another thing I've learned... make sure you have a location where you have full control and aren't rushed.

So these last few days I have modified my original idea and now have something MUCH more creative, much more doable on our budget (shoestring) and one that I think will be a much better video in the end. I have yet to go over everything with Edie but just got in touch so we can do that... If she likes I will share! I hope I am in the right direction, but first and foremost I am interpreting her work and must be 100% in keeping with her thinking and feelings about the song.

I will report. Wish me luck... but I know that when you get sent back to the drawing board, you so often draw something better. Never fear, just know it will come.

coming soon --- LOVE!

I am going to start blogging on a project we are very excited about... The upcoming filming of a music video for singer/songwriter Edie Carey! Edie and I have agreed that we are going to be cinematically interpreting the first song on her CD Bring the Sea... The song title is LOVE and you can hear the track on the main page of her website www.ediecarey.com!
A few years ago Edie got in contact with me about doing a video for her last album. At that time I was finishing up my last feature film HOME and I had to keep putting off the project. Well if you wait long enough good things happen... Edie released another album, HOME is done and out to it's audience. So when I saw I had a window of time for the project I got back in touch with Edie. The timing worked this time, so here we go, with LOVE.
I get many requests to share my working process with up and coming filmmakers. A lot goes into shooting a music video well. We are about 6 weeks away from filming and while I have a few concepts I haven't even shared them with Edie yet, so that is how early we are in this project.
I invite you to follow along on this blog as the project evolves. Okay, now with you watching the pressure will be on... Here we go... ready, set... LOVE... coming soon!

The End of Barns

   Nothing lasts forever or so they say. Wanna prove this concept? Just start doing some home improvements. I mean by yourself. Wow. Put on a coat of paint and let the clock tick away. Before you know it those lovely old windows that you trimmed are cracked and peeling, the decks you stained have faded and even hard wood posts which looked solid have weathered cracked and now look iffy. What's a weekend home depot warrior to do?

    But the really scary part is you can extrapolate this process to just about everything on God's green earth, including and especially YOURSELF! Even entire species get wiped out as a part of mother nature's spring cleaning. Now there's a woman who knows how to toss stuff. 

     Today's essay will hone in on one of her often overlooked casualties but we can't pin this on Mother N alone as man has had a neglectful hand. I speak of our nation's historic barns, many of which  crumple in decay across the center of this great land.

     More than a handful of road trips of late have taken me across the nation's midland. From the interstates you can't see much other than the duplicate strip foods and gas mother ship landing stations. But in that little window of America that you can see from the road is the startling sight of barn after barn after wood barn abandoned, perforated and sagging. A once proud symbol of the pioneer ancestor's prosperity is now left to return to dust on farms that one presumes may now be in the hands of agricultural corporations.

    A common sight is a cement silo standing proudly without it's partner. Another is a wooden outbuilding with a broken back silhouetted across the evening skyline. Still more common is an old grey shell with some remaining boards, no longer much of an obstacle to prairie winds.

   I am not sure why this bothers me but it does. Perhaps it marks a change in our food production from family farms to conglomoculture. Perhaps it is just that it is an aesthetic shame. Perhaps it is just a reminder that we and all we create are temporary.

I throw this out for you to ponder. Anything that makes enough impact for one to exit the freeway to get a  picture for a future blog must have some significance. I share and wonder why I have been affected by these sights. Evidently I am not alone. From one barn remnant in Michigan hung a sign shouting  "Save the Barns" at passers-by and pointing to this website ...

www.mibarn.net

I did not have the energy to exit and photograph that one. I can't help but wonder why.

haverstickfilms.com

FINALLY! Today I uploaded my FLASH masterpiece...aka my beginner website effort in flash, the new Haverstick Films website. Check it out at www.haverstickfilms.com and of course you will need flash to view it, plus a DSL or cable level connection is recommended.
Now much like camping excursion to the Grand Tetons, in order to enjoy this website at this point in time you will need to endure a few pesky bugs. I am aware of them and am working to fix them (eventually) but don't rain on my parade with emails on them just yet because, folks I am darn proud of learning flash and creating this website 100% minus two percent myself! ....fine print disclaimer.... I did need the help of Flash expert and dear friend Adam Clark of Trick Digital to assist in some of the final navigation coding to the pages, but we will not officially give him any credit as Adam is a Flash master and will not want his name on a buggy beginner effort I am certain. You can check out some of his truly amazing work at www.trickdigital.com. He was a gentleman and stifled any snickers when he gazed on my code, but I am very pleased to have used my grey matter to learn what I certainly consider quite a difficult program to get this far with flash.
While I am accepting my Academy Award from FLASH and thanking my mentors I would like to also thank a person I have never met, Nathaniel this young Flash wizard who has put online free tutorials to learn various programs and I followed these things to the letter. If any of you ever want to teach yourself new programs I really recommend this dude at www.tutvid.com, and I also can tell you when you are desperate with a question he even answers your desperation emails.
Anyway, I am still working on perfecting and bebugging, but I am pretty pleased to have gotten this far!
By the way this web launch also marks a switch to our new Haverstick Films logo. The logo and the website were all created from images I took with my cell phone. While much of the film and digital world is going into bigger resolution and more pixels I am enjoying the challenge of creating imagery on my iphone, using such a pure and simple tool can bring clarity.
Enjoy!