Yesterday, 6th June 2008 I graduated film school
and today, in a few hours, I’m catching a flight back to Italy.
That known, last Saturday (May 31st) I was at a
wrap party for a music video (which will be soon uploaded) and I was talking to
my friends Nelson and JC aka “Not Them” soon after their live performance,
about the possibility of shooting a music video for them before I left. I said
yes right away since I really enjoyed their performance and, on top of it all,
the more I shoot the happier I am.
I then realized that that week two major things were
supposed to happen: graduating and moving back (which is a pain in the butt
considering that it’s ALL the stuff I’ve had for the past two and a half years
that needs to be shipped on the other side of the pond… Ah today it’s going to
be a tough day).
In any case, we decided to shoot it on Thursday, right after
Grad Fest in about four hours. On Wednesday night we did about an hour worth of pre-production and
I explained them my ideas about a long dolly tracking shot backwards and them
riding in their neighborhood as paperboys, delivering music instead.
On Monday I also received in the mail my new glass: Leitz 16mm F2.8 and I thought that a fisheye like that would have worked perfectly on a track like that because it would amplify all the movement. To increase the movement effect even more, I decided to shoot it at 18fps with the playback slowed down to 75% so, when reproduced at 24fps the lip sync would still be on the spot but their motion would be much faster and strobysh.
Everything worked: the cops didn't bother us, we had quite a crowd to shoot with, I got to borrow the dolly from school, golden hour helped a lot (although it was about 105F degrees...) and we managed to shoot it in four hours fitted in a very hectic schedule. About 24 hours later (during which there was also the graduation ceremony), I had the edit and the color correction completed.
It's been a blast, everybody had a lot of fun and Not Them loved the video.
