Shooting A Video
On Friday, September 5th we went to an abandoned mansion (location and details omitted for your protection, but it looks something like the Overlook Hotel from The Shining.) to shoot a video for the song ‘Never Be The Same’.
We arrived at the place around midnight with a full crew. Brian Tasker was directing the shoot and brought over thousands of dollars in cameras, lights, and all manner of equipment with him. The band had our equipment and four others as a crew. This was a project on a larger scale than we normally undertake.
We took some still photos that night and the crew had a party. We woke up the next day to find that it was boiling hot in the shade and it was still 10 AM. Most of the crew were hung over and we needed to get lots of water, ice, and Gatorade for the day’s shoot.
I drove down with the producer to get the provisions. While I was gone, Brian, André, and the crew was shooting B-roll shots of outside the mansion when the site manager showed up and shut us down.
Apparently proper clearance was not obtained to shoot at that location and we were left with 2 trucks worth of equipment and a mostly hung over crew to pack up and get the hell out. We left the mansion and came back home exhausted from the heat and without any principle footage shot.
We spent our time in October working on the track and have been working on Dmitri’s guitars as well. Seeing as there will be quite a few guitars in the song, it’s going to take a bit more time.
On Halloween evening, October 31st, we got back together with Brian and actually started shooting footage for the video. Of course that evening brought us the first rain of the season as well. We shot for over three hours before the rain threatened to destroy the lights as we had to pack it in.
The next evening, Brian, André, and I drove around San Francisco and shot another 45 minutes of footage for the video. The lens was a little longer than we were hoping for (we needed a shorted or wide-angle lens for what we wanted to do) but I like some of the footage down on Broadway/Columbus and around City Hall. Maybe some of that will make it into the final video.
In the meantime, I have been wanting to cut together a video that I can post that has clips of the shoot and behind the scenes goodies as well. However, time has not been something that I have had a lot of lately and I have to be able to concentrate for about 4~5 hours to work on the video. It would be nice to be able to have something to show for all of the work we have put into the video so far. Props to Brian and the crew.
