The following music video was done on a shoestring budget. More importantly, It allowed Matthew Allard & I to test an engineering sample camera to see how it would hold up in a semi-controlled lit environment. There tends to be an abundance of camera tests floating around with available & practical light. For this, we wanted to see how the KINERAW S35 would perform in a “pseudo” working set environment.
There was literally no pre-production, storyboards or treatment. Everything right down to art direction was done on the fly. My saving grace however was listening intently to the lyrics and really understanding Craig’s message in the song. To add salt to injury, Phil came up to me midway through the shoot to remind me that there was no reference audio on the camera. Being an engineering sample, of course it didn’t have audio! Doh!
So, throughout the entire remainder of the shoot, I was thinking about the long arduous task of syncing everything in post, while attempting to direct Craig & light various scenes & large areas.
Well fast forward now, and I’m happy to report that all the manual syncing was done quickly & efficiently in under a few hours. The trick was knowing the song back to front, while understanding the chord shapes, song structure, and most importantly, the lyrics. Guess the years of music & audio training came in handy.
On the edit side of things, it was nice to have Craig sitting in.
He made the call on how he wanted the edit to emote the song. Yes, some cuts were perhaps way longer than you would generally incorporate in a music video, but he wasn’t really interested in the entire technical pixel peeping “should have done this & that” vibe. Everything right down to the grade was requested by Craig, as he felt it would best represent his message.
Truth be told, there was approximately 230 Gb worth of rushes, so there certainly wasn’t a lack of shot selection. Craig wanted various cuts, so I wasn’t denying him that luxury just for the sake of “ticking all the right boxes”. This wasn’t intended to be a “high gloss glam” music vid. It was warts & all.
What started as a mere camera test, transpired into a music video and the story of friendship & passion shared by kindred spirits.
All footage was edited in 2K in Adobe CS5.5 and stylized & color corrected with Red Giant’s Colorista II and MBL.
Shot by Matthew Allard
Directed By Clinton Harn
Assisted by Phil Arntz
Edited & Graded by Clinton Harn & Craig Hansen
Art Direction by Clinton Harn & Matthew Allard
Very special thanks to Anna Dalton for all the assistance you provided us in production.
