Destenee McKenzie hit me up to supply Grip/Lighting and Camera support for her music video that we shot on Tuesday December 13th. Destenee wanted to use the AGrip Jib w/Remote head.
Destenee is a talented young girl who is both extremely pretty and extremely nice; She makes all of her own music and records her own vocals. It is rare to find an artist that has a combination of all of these things.
Destenee wrote the song that we shot the video for which was called "OK". Destenee came my direction a couple weeks before the shoot to talk about the concept and what equipment she would need and we worked out a basic plan. Then she went to work securing the location and making her own costumes. The basic idea of the video was that, without music people have no inspiration and they are basically dead, zombies.. etc. But when the music plays, it makes things "OK", like a ray of light shining through the clouds it brings people back to life and infuses their lives with joy. This is what we all tried to capture in her music video.
I brought a cargo van to the shoot the day of and I hired
Ryan Spencer to be the Jib Operator for this video. When you see the sweeping jib shots you will know that it was ryan who operated that.
I was extremely impressed with the crew that Destenee put together for this shoot.
DJ Cosgrove is the editor for this video and he was on set the day of the shoot; when all is said and done he will have done a lot more then just edit this video, he was there to not only do grip work but also provide creative input like an assistant director.
Also, bad ass film maker
Joe Nation was there to help Direct. Joe is a very busy person and he told Destenee that he would come help out but he made it clear that he would not be able to be there all day; however the time that he ws there he really went in. Joe Nation was literally running and putting up lights and making sure we moved things along, very impressive.
Bad ass video by Joe Nation
Our DP was
Joe Lombardi. He worked really hard on this production and when Joe Nation left, he really came through in a role that was more then a DP.
A lot of people helped on this production and I wasn't able to catch all of their names. Destenee obviously has something magical about her that draws quality people to her.
This video was a lot of fun to make although we did run into time limitations; we had to work as fast as we could during the end as well as juggling the location with some other people who had agreements to use portions of it during our filming. I think this video is going to come out really good and I was happy to be a part of it because I got to meet some cool people and make a music video that is uplifting and positive.
