Whatcha wanna do?! The evolution of a music video thats gettin shot on Monday

Check out my interview that I did for InFocusMM with B.A.D Company (Bars & Drums)


Here it is, the music video that this Blog entry is about: (watch it full screen, 1080, let it load first and turn your speakers up)


B.A.D. Shoot:

This shoot was amazing. AGrip and Ryan Spencer and Sean Brooks and B.A.D Company were in full effect and we really went in on this video. This video is comming out on Tuesday 11/29/11 and I believe that it is in the top 3 music videos that AGrip.net has been a part of. This video was taken to Jason Haberman from What310 for "sweetening"; Jason did color correction and subtle grading as well as the visual effects. I helped Jason with that on the lighting side.

Note: These stills have not been color graded and corrected yet.

B.A.D Company (Bars and Drums) is the name of the group that we did the video for. The song that we did the video for is called "B.A.D". Buy the entire album with 15 hot tracks online for just $6.99.


Ryan Spencer and I brainstormed and came up with a treatment. Ryan wrote and finalized the final treatment. Some of the ideas and things that happened are not what I had envisioned but the video did come out as good as I had hoped that it would and that is saying something.

Q: What made this video great?

A1: The song. I loved the song, it went really hard and this was a vibe that we were able to come up with a good and fun vision for.

A2: The artist came through with their end of the deal, they brought extras, they brought props, they got the location, they brought energy that matched ours, and together we were able to make something great.

A3: the AGrip Jib Crane... This thing killed it... this thing is seriously going to merk the music video game. We got all kinds of cool shots with this. If you read my Jib Blog entry from earlier you will see some of the types of shots that we were thinking about. We succeeded in getting a lot of really creative Jib shots. We went vertical and used the jib with stairs, with 3 story warehouse shelving, with a guy riding like a ninja ontop of a van... and the performance shots that we did with the jib were AWESOME.

A4: Lighting, killed it. I don't want to sound cocky but the lighting was sick. We moved extremely fast for the story line section of the video and there was no time to set up huge lighting set-ups. AGrip does have a newer run and gun lighting set up that is killing the game. Story line run and gun looked great on the lighting but where the lighting really shined was on the performance scenes. We did 4 amazing performance scenes in less than 2 hours and they really are something that you will have to check out.

A5: the collaborative spirit on set. We went with a small crew and the few people that were there were extremely dedicated to making this a great video. The crew of this video was Ryan Spencer, Sean Brooks and myself Adam from AGrip.net. Jason haberman will be doing an effect or two in post for this video.

There is a lot of other Answers to this question. This video will be comming out soon so check it out.

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This is the First part of the Blog Entry about this music video for B.A.D Company, written Thursday November 17th 2011:

This shoot hasn't happened yet, I am writing this blog so that you can step into my world, learn something, predict, and see what you think about the finished product.

I'm kind of putting us on the spot here, we have to come up with something good right? Otherwise you are all going to laugh at us. Thats fine, at least we will all have some fun.

Okay so, Director Ryan Spencer hits me up, says he's got this video, gets me a deposit to lock me in on Monday November 21st and he tells me his budget. Together we formulate an equipment list. This shoot is going down in 2 days.

We're going to have a 10' Jib on a dolly, with a remote head and focus control. Shooting with DSLR's. We are going to have some dolly track, fog machines, Kino Flo's, LED spots, Tungsten Fresnels, Gels... We got all that.

I wish I could post the song, its really dope but it is not to be released yet.

What we need is a concept and we are working that out. Take a look at these pictures and you can get a feel for the location.

Now imagine the Jib swooping around all fast getting performance shots of the rappers in different locations. Crazy lighting, fog, brass knuckles, a safe, maybe a guy performing on top of that container, maybe a jib shot of somebody running down the stairs, maybe a rapper comming out from the door at the top of the stairs after the guy ran down, and the rapper has a ski mask on and then he pulls the mask off and starts rapping. maybe a mob car inside the warehouse lit up cool with a jib shot comming down and around to the trunk that opens and one of the rappers is tied up in the trunk, but then one of the other rappers walks by like a ghost and hands him a stun gun and shuts the trunk door, then a second later some confident pulp fiction ass goonie nillas walk up in suits and jerry curl and open the trunk, bam lightning bolts start shooting out of the trunk then we get super slow-mo shots of these goons shaking and spazzing from the lightning that is zapping the shit out of them while the place fills up with fog, then some other goons get super terrified and run in slo-mo while one of them is trying to call for back up on an old school walki-talki then BAM he's getting zapped, spazzing on the floor, the rapper picks up the walki-talki and starts rapping into it as he is walking through the joint electrocuting the shit out of the thugs with the stun gun and the lightning bolts flying out all crazy like the evil emperor did it on star wars when he was killing Vader. Then it cuts to the Boss Goon that the guy was calling on the walki-talki and he has a suit on with some knarly eyebrows and he's like "Oh shiiit" so he throws the keys to the safe into the briefcase with a bunch of sloppy papers that he was trying to shred real fast and then he books out of there, and then... hmmm

I could go for days with this but what you think? The song is pretty hard right? We don't have the biggest budget ever but we do have some nice gear for this. Stay tuned for pictures from this shoot. And we'll be showing you the video soon enough.

Check in with this blog entry later if you know whats good!!! At least you can see WTF happens with this video. Its going down on Monday and we're gonna try real hard to keep this one out of the Vortex.

[Vortex: Metaphysical place that music videos go to right before they are either never released or released so late that they are no longer relevent to modern day life.]

Video shoot for Ginagi, Ralek Gracie

Alright errybody I wanted to share a music video that I worked on a little while ago. This video was for Ralek Gracie who as many of you may know is a pretty serious Jiu Jitsu fighter; he actually beat Kazushi Sakuraba who I thought was probably the best fighter in the worlrd. Well, we did this music video and, I know its not THE BEST music video and song in the world, but damn people are being ...haters big time. Comparing this to Rebecca Black and stuff. Damn... I know the guy is known for fighting but that doesn't mean he can't try some new things, I don't think that this song and video are THAT bad, its not Jay Z or Kanye but damn its kinda fun. Its got some stuff in it I call "inside raps" (when you rap about some things that only people in your circle know about and nobody else gets) and its got some repeats like when you run out of things to say you just repeat the word.. and its got some talking at one part... where he's just saying random things like "gotta get something from my CAR! car, car car, I hope I didn't park it very FAR, far far" but mannnn this thing is kinda fun, check it out:

I've always been a big fan of the Gracies. I have really fond memories of the first time that my dad let me hang out with him and his friends in a man to man kind of way, I was about 15. My dad had "caveman BBQ's" and all the guys would come over and watch "Bare Knuckles Fighting", which was basically UFC when it first started and was something brand new. Some say that the UFC was started for the Gracies and Royce Gracie. This was manly stuff and I was finally allowed to watch it and hang out with the men. I will never forget seeing Royce Gracie fight and hearing stories from some of the other guys about some of his fights. I learned quickly that Jiu-Jitsu is a great fighting technique that works and can allow a smaller man to defeat a much larger and even stronger man.

Through-out the years I have watched the Gracies fight and watched their instructional DVD's. I even learned some of their moves and used them successfully in fights back in the day. (true story).

When Ralek Gracie hit me up to do Grip & Lighting on his music video, I thought that that was pretty cool. Ralek Gracie is a Jiu-Jitsu fighter but he is also a musician and he came up with a cool song and music video concept that he hired me to be a part of. I talked to Ralek the night before the shoot to make sure that I could in fact do the shoot, because as it turns out I was already scheduled to shoot footage for another music video earlier that day in Manhattan Beach. I coordinated the earlier shoot which needed very minimal equipment and then I wrote down what gear I would be bringing to Ralek's shoot in accordance with his budget.

By 5:30 on Tuesday November 15th the sun had completely set and I had shot some beautiful sunset shots right near the ocean with a classic restored 50's Cadillac. I then headed to a warehouse which was about 15 minutes away to shoot with Ralek.

I got to the warehouse where I met Ralek Gracie and my DP, Echo Charles. Echo was really cool to work with because he was laid back while being efficient at the same time. These are important qualities for a Cinematographer to have because, obviously everybody wants their video to come out amazing; freaking out will not help you get an amazing video. Echo was smart, on point and very easy to collaborate with. Echo took my suggestions about various lighting options and made the final decision on everything. I really liked the visual product that we created for this shoot. Jason Haberman and his partner woman Neysa, were also there to help me with the Lighting and Jason brought his own extensive skills to our collaboration. Echo brought his own partner woman, Sara; Sara and Neysa were a big help on this shoot. (Dang, I need to get my own partner woman….)

As soon as I rolled my truck into the warehouse and met Ralek and Echo, we wasted no time getting down to business and started talking about the shots that we wanted to get. Ralek reiterated the concept that he told me the night before and showed me where he wanted to film and we talked about the angles and possible framing. I formulated a lighting plan and then found out where the power outlets were. I was a little nervous about not having enough power to run all of the lights that I initially wanted but we were able to run enough stingers in order to get what we wanted.

[AGrip TIP: Always have lots of surge protectors and cube taps with you. Go crazy and bring 1 cube tap or surge protector for every stinger that you bring.]


 

We carried over the matts that would go on the ground that the fighters would perform and fight on. We arranged pallets so that people could stand on them and we also made a DJ booth out of pallets. I climbed up high into the steel shelving to rig a tungsten light that was gelled with a party color, to shine onto the DJ booth. I hooked up a fog machine behind the pallets that made up the DJ booth and then I hooked up a Tungsten Fresnel unit to backlight the fog, I put the unit on a dimmer so that we could lower the intensity and I wanted it to go slightly warmer. I used my Kino tubes to light the floor in a cool and moody way and since the fighting Matt had a shiny black finish the Kino bulbs made cool reflections off of it. I made sure to establish areas of our "white light" for the night which was tungsten and then mix in other areas with color. At this point I started to notice that my DP, Echo, had brought some cool lights of his own; what was also cool is that his LED Spot lights were battery powered. They were a daylight color temperature and we used them in the frame, and to back light the fog in the upper section of our frame. When the warmer tungsten light backlighting the bottom of the fog mixed with the daylight that was backlighting the top part of the fog it created a really awesome purple color especially where the two lights met. To be honest this scene looked great and to top it all off we had 3 sections of my 45 degree curved track to use to capture the performance shots.

Echo did a great job of operating the camera and setting it up. We quickly fine-tuned things and we were very happy with the image that we created. Ralek came back from getting food and champagne and he brought about 30 people with him. I got to meet some of the other Gracies which was cool and they also brought quite a few hot chic’s with them.


In no time we were filming. The shoot went smooth and everybody was having a lot of fun. The song was an upbeat song and so people were dancing and grooving to the music while they watched the fights; I have done a lot of shoots where we have to tell extras to get into it, that wasn't the case with this shoot, there was no acting everybody was really having a good time.

I give major props to Ralek for coming up with the idea for this video. As a music video maker we are always looking for something interesting to shoot with dynamic camera movement; this was the first time that I have seen fighting moves done like this and it looked awesome. All of the fighters that we used were actual pro fighters and they looked the part, they each had a few moves that were unique and looked interesting on camera.

When we were done with the main set up we filmed Ralek and his crew breaking into the warehouse. The last shot of this night was a really cool one; we took all of the people who came to the video and had them go outside near the roll up door to the warehouse. I did some simple lighting (that I thought was pretty nice) and then we had Ralek open the door, as the door slid open fog came into the frame and we dollied back quickly as a massive amount of cool looking people flowed into the warehouse.

This shoot was a lot of fun, it was cool to meet the Gracies and I also got to hang out with my friend Angelo Costa who directed the Donnie video that you can read about on my blog.

Stay tuned for the video, you can catch it on this blog in the future.

What310.com - "Tell me that you love me" music video

NOTE: This video is posted at the end of this blog entry:

Yesterday me and Jason Haberman from what310.com shot a music video; it was freakin crazy.
Jason booked me for the shoot 3 weeks in advance. He sent an email with the song and the treatment. We put together a gear list, the gear that we used was mostly run and gun stuff with a couple things to film a live performance from the band at a bar at night. This is a list of the gear that you can rent from AGrip that we used:

Tell me that you want me blog by AGripRentals

Steadicam
Large reflector Disc
8'x8' frame w/ ultrabounce/silver checker
2 1K's
1 650W Fresnel
1 300W Fresnel
2 150W Fresnel
1 Kino Flo Diva 400
2 8' straight track
Doorway dolly w/skate track wheels
2 Litepanel Mini's
Crate of stingers

The truck was loaded and I was headed to Inglewood at 80 mph at 7:30am on Sunday October 30th. When I got there, we headed to the neighborhood that we would film our first shot in. It was a quiet and nice neighborhood in the South Bay area. The house we were shooting in front of was a pretty nice suburban house with some fun Halloween decorations. We set up 16' of track on the sidewalk across the street and then we waited for the band to start getting there. Some of the band members were late and either hung over or drunk from the night before. Soon the car that we would be using showed up. It was a pretty funny little car, perfect for the shoot. It was a hatch back, white, old, smog problem, and really jalopyish. We filmed a shot dollying over on the track of the car pull up to the sidewalk to pick up this chic as she came out of the front door. The band member that drove was slightly inebriated and he could barely drive. He ended up driving the car up onto the curb and stopping it too fast. The girl got in and they drove off. It was really funny and totally ridiculous and unexpected.

This music video had a certain style to the production that I like. We did run and gun story line stuff in multiple locations for the first part of the day and then we took a break and ate lunch around 3pm, then we lit up the performance scene at the bar and shot that footage from 6 to 8pm. Then it was a wrap. Jason did a great job cutting this. Take a look at the color grading and light replacement work that Jason did. We shot nice looking footage but Jason also made the footage look great in post and the combination of quality raw images and good color grading made this 7D footage look great.

Something important to note: This music video was shot on SUNDAY October 30th and completely finished and online by WEDNESDAY! November 2nd!!!... Jason Haberman is a music video editor that gets it done. He does good work but also, crucial to this industry, he keeps projects out of the Vortex. (Vortex: [vawr-teks]noun,plural-tex·es,-ti·ces / in Music video - A situation where the project that you have put the sweat of your life into, goes into a metaphysical place where it is never released to the public and if it is, it is released so late that it is no longer relevant.)

Seriously people, hire Jason Haberman and keep your hard work out of the Vortex!!!

Hire AGrip.net and What310.com to make YOUR next punk rock video (or any genre... hire us and its onnnn)


http://youtu.be/LOYr9JHG0pI