VETROZERO - IL MOSTRO By Marco Menestrina On ExposureRoom

Comments

Will Mahoney

January 22, 2009 12:08 PM

Bitchin!

Marco,
This was a badass video!! Nice job on this one. I love the red back-lighting, the blue lighting that throws everyone into silhouette, the snails. Nice!

I like the super-wide close-up down-angle on the singer. Very dynamic shot, was it the 16mm lens?

I don't speak the language (Italian?), but what is the significance of the snails? You used them very artistically in this video. I like the singer singing to one, having them crawling on the instruments while people play.

The last video I saw of yours was the water-skiing competition. This is completely different and really awesome. Keep up the good work!

Will

Marco Menestrina

January 26, 2009 07:40 AM

Cheers

Hi Will,

Thanks a lot for your comment! This video was very "home-made" in the production but I'm quite satisfied with the result. Everything was built from scratch and except for the 1st AD and myself, the whole crew had no previous film experience: they were just friends of ours that dedicated us their time and help for free.

Yeah I use my 16mm a lot, including that one shot.

The snails don't have any sub-layered significance. Both the singer and myself were bored from music videos that have the visuals closely related to the lyrics: we wanted to stay away from that and use a much more surreal, dream-like approach and started thinking: "What does this song look like?". We came up with a bunch of non-related, very visual-appealing ideas and cut down to the best... Which happened to be red fluorescents and snails slithering in UV paint.

I have done some shorts and other things in between but unfortunately I'm not allowed to upload anything yet. As for the waterskiing thing, yes that was a very different project and not really of my favorite kind for that matter... But I always try to keep my horizons as wide as possible.

Thanks again,
Marco

Will Mahoney

April 30, 2009 10:25 AM

Again, awesome video.

Marco,
May I pick your brain about a few things?

Your other video was much more simple - it seemed like you had five or six different shots of the two band members singing the lyrics into the camera.
Plus a few other shots to work in. It worked and was effective - resulting in a nice video.

This video, Il Mostro, is more complicated, with many more shot angles and choices to edit with. I know that you did this a while ago, but can you discuss your process a little bit?

It looks like you shot these guys performing from at least 12 different angles - a combination of dolly, tripod, and handheld/shoulder.

1. Did you just have the song playing on a stereo and these guys play along with it?

2. Did you have them perform the whole song (start to finish) from each camera angle? This seems like it would get tiring, really quickly.

I guess I'm just looking for you to expand on the production process a little more for me. Could you?

Thanks,
Will

Marco Menestrina

May 04, 2009 06:04 AM

Sorry it took me a while to answer but I've been quite busy these days.

Wow you were serious when you said you were analyzing my videos... I don't know what to say other than I'm very flattered!

So:

1. You need a quite loud PA system for playback so the band will pretend to play along. Since you can't "pretend to play" with the drums, the PA has to be loud otherwise the drummer won't hear a thing. The singer has to sing no matter what because you can tell if he/she is just moving his/her lips.

You also need an audio/visual reference to match the clips with the song in post. What I do for that is adding a 1k tone, 1 frame long for three times before the song starts with intervals of half a second between one another. Something like this: BEEP - half second interval - BEEP - half second interval - BEEP - song begins. You can add these beeps easily in Final Cut. When this song is played for playback, you'll need somebody to clap the clapper board right on the 3rd beep (the first two beeps are there to get the right rhythm to clap on the third). The clap on the 3rd beep is your reference: when you'll be in post you'll still use the song with the 3 beeps to edit with, so that you'll have to match the 3rd beep of the song with the clapper board. This way the visuals and the music will match perfectly. I hope this wasn't too confusing.

2. You want to get at least a few wide master shots with the whole thing. Close ups and singles try to get different ones for different part of the song.

Watch some of these, they're helpful at times:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWLWX3aC5PQ&feature=related

Take care and good luck!
Marco

Will Mahoney

May 06, 2009 09:00 AM

Marco! Whoa! That "Making of the Video" is awesome! Thanks for pointing me to that. I completely forgot that MTV used to do that, and apparently they still do. Nice! That was the exact behind the scenes type of stuff I was looking for.

Get some master shots. Then, break the song down into sections and shoot mediums and close-ups for different parts. Very cool. I can't wait to put it into practice!

Thanks,
Will

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VETROZERO - IL MOSTRO

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Bitchin!

Cheers

Again, awesome video.

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