Or, How to make a music video with a musical number, wedding, and underwater fight scene for under 2 grand..
Sometimes when I can't totally connect the dots on a music video — let's face it, over a decade in this business has not done wonders for my attention span — I ask the director to grab control of this blog and explain it. Much like he did with this Electric Six video, director Justin J Lowe overdelivered to an awesome and very much appreciated extent. And, it will hopefully be a helpful guide for any directors or bands looking to put on a (video) show.
So, without any more prelude — other than embedding the video, which may actually be more fun to watch after reading this — I pass the page to Justin... (Also, if you're reading this on the homepage, please be sure to click through for the rest of the post)
Justin J. Lowe, director of Electric Six "Psychic Visions":
"First off to make a video like this, for this cheap, you're either going to have to pull a lot of favors or learn a lot of software. I've lived in Portland, Oregon for quite a few years and have a job as an editor at Joint Editorial, so I was able to get help on special effects, color grading, things like that. A lot of people worked on this video and helped me get to a place where the band and I liked it.
The video follows Electric Six lead singer Dick Valentine as he crawls through a cardboard box and enters three different worlds that show aspects of his subconscious and challenge him. I wanted a musical number in the video because the original mix of the song had some finger snaps in it that reminded me of West Side Story. In addition,Valentine had an idea about a wedding with a shocking moment and I had been wanting to do an underwater fight scene, so I thought: Why not just do everything we'd like to do in one video?"
Making the Video
"I think Valentine really enjoyed making this video with me because we used a lot of real locations, and we weren't just throwing him up in front of a green screen. After we would shoot each scenario he'd get a smile on his face and tell me, 'You're two for two." We really shot quite a bit in just a couple days."
Camera
"Although the last video I directed was shot with the Canon 5D, 'Psychic Visions' was shot with the Panasonic GH2, on the reccomendation of my DP Jason Roark.
Jason Roark, DP: The GH2 is an incredible video machine, masquerading as an $800 consumer grade stills camera. There is a large community of hackers that have pushed this little camera's abilities so much farther than they deserve to be pushed.
Over the last few years, I've shot tons and tons of video on the newest generations of still/video hybrids, mostly on Canon's offerings. The mightly little GH2 (especially when hacked) can hold its own against much, much more expensive cameras."
The Prologue
"Dick Valentine was really pushing for this scene. In the original script the video started with him walking up to the lemonade stand which you see about a minute into the video. The bad guys were going to be an act three reveal – the final obstacle he has to get through, and a moment where Dick stops running from his fears and has to face them. However, Dick thought it might be fun for his character to be roughed up in the opening scene, so his character could start off the video really down on his luck. I thought about it, and was having a hard time sticking it into the narrative. I also had my producer's hat on; We were making this video on a $1,000 budget (ultimately it came in at $1,550) and we already had to shoot a musical number, a wedding, an underwater fight scene, and intro and outro scenes with kid actors in one three day weekend! So one day I get an email from Dick that says this:
I would like to make the case one more time for the beatdown opening. I hear you out, but my two cents is that we are not making the Seventh Seal. We are making an Electric Six video. I wouldn't worry as much about the meanings of the people I am fighting and how it relates to the overall narrative. I just want to get the shit beat out of me...as often as possible.
I think my fans want to see this as well.I have to admit this email won be over. I decided to go real dark and serious with it. Kind of give it a Drive level of intensity – that was my goal anyways, but there's still some comedy in it because anytime you throw Dick Valentine into a scene it becomes absurd. I mean I'm pretty sure he rides a moose with a 90 year old women wearing a light up bra in the 'Danger! High Voltage' video.
But initially the tone I wanted was pretty dark. I had a score created just for this scene by a local Portland, Oregon composer Jared Jensen and told him I wanted it to sound like something out of a David Fincher or Chris Nolan Batman movie. I think he nailed it. In addition Jared and his colleague Lou Guidi who works on the show Grimm, did a bunch of Foley for the scene and it was really fun adding their punches and footsteps etc into the scene."
The Lemonade Stand
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Anabelle, who is in this scene, previously starred in my Duran Duran video that I did for a Genero contest. This was a fun little cameo to put her in there. However, the funny thing about Anabelle is that she could really care less about being in a video or not. She didn't grow up with music videos like we did. When I asked her dad if she would like to be in this video she apparently told him that she would sleep on it. Later, she told me she would do it – but only if I made the lemonade. How can you not love this girl?
This was a hard scene to shoot because we had temperamental weather, and we were dealing with kid actors. But we pulled it off – it just took a few hours, and a lot of umbrellas. Slater Dixon, the colorist did some nice clean up work because some of our shots came out sunnier then others. The sun kept coming out and going away behind rain clouds."
The Musical Number
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We borrowed as many lights as we could for this scene from Don't Act Big, a production company inside Wieden and Kennedy that Roark works at, and our crew really lit it well. We wanted to make the scene look like it was straight out of the 50s and Technicolor (although in our color grade, we ended up in a sort of Mad Men area that worked better).
I cast a really fantastic actress/dancer for this scene, Haley Talbot. She studied at The School of Oregon Ballet Theater, and her audition was just incredible. She was also up for whatever you threw at her. Dick Valentine thought it might be a good idea if she strangled him with her legs, at the end of the dance number, and that turned out to be a great idea."
The Wedding
"This was hands down the easiest scene to shoot. I had allotted four hours, and we were wrapped in two including set up! Chris Funk, who played the wedding officiator (and also is in the band The Decemberists) was so great with improv and really kept the extras entertained, in addition to making the scene much more humorous.
Roark was loving the disapproving looks Funk was giving Dick Valentine as he swigs whiskey in the scene, so I was sure to have our editor Alyssa Coates include that. I think it's good to remember things that work on set. If there's a little bit of magic on set – don't let it get lost in a pile of footage*."
The Underwater Fight Scene
"This is something I've wanted to do since about 2008. I loved the idea of men in suits duking it out under water. We had a specific cameraman for this scene, Dustin Wise, who is great in the water, and who was working with a small GoPro camera in a water proof case. I was pretty impressed that the camera did not fog up at all — the waterproof case is impressive — although we ran into certain issues of course. For instance, when the bad guys jump into the water, it creates a ton of bubbles and the water gets a bit murky. When someone jumps into a pool with a suit on, the suit puffs up. So there were little things like that we had to work around. Additionally this was one of the more difficult scenes for our colorist Slater Dixon to grade, because the camera autofocuses, and you have less control over the quality of the images you're capturing. But Dustin did a great job."
The Outro
"We end with a ridiculous and very 80s-style high five freeze frame, to remind the viewer that they have not been watching The Seventh Seal and have in fact been watching an Electric Six video this whole time."
Addedum:
"*Sometimes a bit that is great on set, just doesn't work in an edit – but it's always good to give it a shot, and also good to be able to let it go if it doesn't work. Also, If someone comes up with something, and it's not your idea, don’t think that you shouldn’t use it. You have to be OK with people bringing their creativity to the table, and you should encourage it, because film is a collaborative process."
Thank You: Justin J. Lowe, Electric Six
