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Edgy Music Video - 'Shot with a Pen'

Robert Watcher

Well-known member
I have completed the Music Video that I have been working on, for my son Ryan's new song - "The End of Things". An Edgy video style was used to match his quirky and darker song writing style. We really wanted a feeling of the video being shot with film instead of a video camera. The finished piece that started with my Concept and Story Board a few weeks ago, is exactly what Ryan had envisioned:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03iR9_a5-Lc

BE sure to change the quality Setting from 360p, to 720p to watch in High Definition as shot.




- - - SHOT WITH A PEN - - -

Shot exclusively with the Olympus E-PL1 and 14-42mm kit lens.

Zero budget with video clips being shot in only 2 small rooms and lighting supplied by the 50 watt and 100 watt halogen modeling lights from 2 studio strobes (that's all I had available to me).

Manual focus, and settings of 1250 ISO for all scenes. Aperture Priority exposure was set to minus 1 to 1 1/2 stops depending on the mood I was after. Shutter speed was set to 1/30'th second and colors post processed for contrast and colder tones - for a more film like look. The video was edited using Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9.0 (inexpensive consumer video editing software).

The E-PL1 cameras Diorama Art Filter was used for the effect on the graveyard scene and closing flower scene. Ryan is a really good performer and high energy with short quick thrashes when playing live on stage - - - and so we tried to incorporate that sensation with the quick sharp movement in clips like some of the lead guitar parts.


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Ryan has being writing and producing songs that are rather dramatic and almost always unconventional (like this song that as no bass guitar and yet his use of the kick drum acts like a bass through it) - since he purchased his Fostex 24 track digital recorder when he was around 14 years old. He started out playing bass guitar, playing his first live gig at 13 - where he stole some of thunder from the other much older band members, with his energy and impressive playing.

His main love is drums and he is an incredible and creative drummer - whether he is producing the sounds with his drum kit, electronic drums or digital drum pad, or writing dashes in Reason with a pencil for the structure. He played guitar and was the singer for years with his band.

He loved the comradery of playing live with his band, but really enjoys his own projects such as this new one, where he can use his own personal work and play and produce everything himself.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I have completed the Music Video that I have been working on, for my son Ryan's new song - "The End of Things". An Edgy video style was used to match his quirky and darker song writing style. We really wanted a feeling of the video being shot with film instead of a video camera. The finished piece that started with my Concept and Story Board a few weeks ago, is exactly what Ryan had envisioned

Bob,

I am so pleased I finally discovered this video and here of the unedited video giving a window to how it was made.

I am so impressed with the careful preparation. This video is work of love and artistry. I'm impressed with the quality and the love between the team and how creativity obviously works in a team, one persons talent playing off another.

Since a lot of us don't click through to videos, here's a few images showing the lighting on Ryan.


Screen shot1a.JPG


Screen shot1b.JPG


Screen shot1c.JPG


Screen shot1d.JPG

This is an effective use of the video capability of the still camera to allow one family to come together and essentially make a creative music video and almost no cost.

Ryan is shown well with a back light and lighting to half his face.

This should inspire us to look into the video capabilities of our cameras. From the still here, there's also a lot of interesting possibilities to extract still pictures, themselves commanding attention.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I do hope folk will look at this work at it represents an important creative effort that we should discuss.

Asher
 

Robert Watcher

Well-known member
I am so impressed with the careful preparation. This video is work of love and artistry. I'm impressed with the quality and the love between the team and how creativity obviously works in a team, one persons talent playing off another.

Thank you for perceiving the purpose of this video and my use of basic tools to achieve the end results. Mind you a quality of video and look (a result of larger sensor video capture) that has not been available until recently. It was very satisfying completing this project.

-------

As for the initial process . .

After hearing Ryans completed song that he sent me by email, I got excited about putting something together with him (he had no idea about it) and within a few minutes came up with the concept. Sitting at my computer with the song "timeline" and with a pen and paper in hand - I sketched out the rough story board containing 25 scenes for the 4 and a half minute long song. It was made up of simple drawings on paper and a few descriptive notes as well as specific times for the scene changes.

That evening I headed to Ryans place to go over the story board, refine and add some of his ideas where they fit in. While I have not used such a concept before - it is amazing how valauble a storyboard is to a project - - - especially the way that you can work through the complete video in your head just by looking a the piece of paper while listening to the song, and envision how everything will come out. Also it makes it so easy to shoot scenes and sequences out of order knowing exactly what will go where in the final compilation of clips. When Ryan saw it and followed along the times for each scene while listening to the song, he also was able to fully envision the result.

That night I took my E-PL1 camera along to take some test stills and video of his house to see how feasable my ideas were. I had hoped to turn those stills into a more refined Storyboard. It wasn't really needed though as my simple drawings proved to be just as valuable. Here is a picture of my storyboard:

12729159594099_storyboard.jpg



That same evening, Ryan was anxious to get going on the project and insisted that we take some "final" footage for a few of the scenes. It's kind of nice that we did - because his vision of the chorus parts was a little different than mine. When he looked at the video footage the next day, he stated that he was really hoping for more camera movement - and that those parts set up on a tripod were a little too static for him.

This was a little bit of the video that we shot that night. We ended up using the crying scene and the standing up guitar playing scenes (black and white in the final video) from this footage - - - but ended up reshooting the parts where he is singing straight on, and ended up handholding the camera and moving in around and about, according to the feel of the music that was playing on his iPhone for him to lip sync to - - - for all subsequent filming:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecwYLOsIHOo

Because of our busy schedules, we never got back at the project for another 2 weeks. Final tally was that we shot all of the footage from 4:00PM to 9:00PM - which included the 25 scenes plus about 12 to 15 extra angles for filling in the gaps. I headed out on another evening when the light was right - to a local cemetary and a park and got my 2 scenes of the tombstones and tulips.

I did the editing at my place, which took about 3 days to complete. From my experience doing a lot of Audio editing over the years - I knew that the time consuming part would be putting it all together. But totally satisfying - and a great experience collaberating with my son on a project that is both his and mine.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Rob,

So is your background sound engineering? Is that your job? I love the spontaneity of the project. Sketching the 25 scenes like that with notes shows some insight into the process!

Asher
 

Robert Watcher

Well-known member
Rob,

So is your background sound engineering? Is that your job? I love the spontaneity of the project. Sketching the 25 scenes like that with notes shows some insight into the process!

Asher

My background is primarily photography - that is my job and how I have made a large part of my living since 1979.

However as a teenager I was in a band and between gigs, pushed the limits of my dads "sound-on-sound" reel to reel recorder to layer 15 or 20 tracks of myself playing all instruments and singing all harmonies. I wanted to have a recording studio, but the costs were just too great for me at that time.

I also started out as a teenager with my interest far more into filmmaking than stills photography - using my dads 8mm camera to shoot all kinds of experimental stuff improvises with whatever I had at hand. An example when I was around 16 years old, was an animated complete chess game where my only support was duct taping the camera handle onto my music stand. I moved the chess pieces bit by bit in between gently pressing the camera trigger so it didn't move. Remember that you had to wind those cameras up regularly to use them and each press of the trigger would be several frames long. It actually turned out quite good. Just after getting married (1976) I was pretty cutting edge by being one of the few people who had a Super8 sound camera and film editing tools. I traveled to quite a few 8mm film festivals at that time.

The cost of 8mm film was just way to much for me to waste with my new family and so I traded the camera in on a Mamiya 220 and a couple of Photofloods and reflectors in 1979 - and went into business knocking on doors to get my portrait work.

So I have a real love for filmmaking and audio recording. However I wasn't really able to get back into either of those until digital came along. I got involved in the audio recording again when I son Ryan purchased a 24 track digital recorder back in the late 1990's. I did a lot of recording and mixdown for his band and a couple other bands of friends of his - and carried on with computer based DAWs. I love those things - but I don't have a lot of time for them - - - and they don't suppliment my income so have to be put on the back burner. Audio and Filmmaking are a love and a passion - and I know a fair bit about them both and have a fair bit of insight into the processes - - - just not the experince that I would like to have.
 

Robert Watcher

Well-known member
BTW, where are located? I'd love to see your son in a live show!

Asher

We live in Southwestern Ontario. Ryan no longer performs live though - and the band that he was part of for some time, is no longer together for serious work. He is a 26 year old family man who is expecting a new baby in the next few weeks. It is amazing how priorities change when family comes along LOL.

So he has this project that he is working on where he is writing his own work, playing all parts of the song and recording in the room and with the gear that is shown during the guitar lead in this video - - - and will be making the songs available on the web where he can probably get more exposure than he has ever been able to.
 
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