Anatomy of a Music Video

So by now, most of you have probably seen the video we played this weekend prior to Tim's new message series based on Ephesians. My recent post gave a glimpse into the creation of the video.

I added up how much time I have invested in this video...12 hours. This includes preplanning the shots, locations and props plus shooting on Monday afternoon, Wednesday morning and Wednesday afternoon, as well as editing on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I finished the video on Thursday and the band rehearsed with it that evening. The song is very fast paced and the band had some trouble doing it at the tempo of the original. So, I recorded our band performing the song and did a few minor editing changes on Friday.

On Saturday afternoon, the band played Suzy's Diet...I mean Deering's Diet as the first song in their rehearsal. We played the newly edited version and they nailed it! The tech team had one more chance to practice it and it matched up perfectly.

Deering's Diet from Steve Browning on Vimeo.

A few notes about the video...first, we kind of got busted at Kroger. We went there to get the props we needed and shoot a few scenes. We got most of the shots we needed when we heard a code 179 or something like that come over the intercom. Deering mentioned we were probably busted and sure enough, a minute later the store manager and asst. manager asked us to stop shooting. You need corporate approval to video tape inside the store so we apologized, finished our shopping and left.

On Wednesday afternoon, we shot the scenes at Burger King. The manager came out and told us we couldn't shoot on their property either. No problem. I shot from the sidewalk! I actually laughed out loud when Dan did the last scene. I showed him what I wanted and he did a fantastic job!

I was not happy with some of the lighting. I should have recruited some help so I could have concentrated on directing the video and had someone else moving the equipment around. By the end of the day on Monday, I was running out of time and had to rush some of the shots. You'll notice more shadows and darker shots on Deering's face during these shots.

Watch the scene in the kitchen when Deering gets the milk out. I totally missed the fact that the light stand was in the background...and so was I! I placed the camera in the fridge and checked the viewfinder a couple of times to be sure I was getting the angle I wanted. What I missed was the fact that when I moved out of the way, I was still in the shot! Luckily I was able to blow the clip up to about 120% of the original and crop me out. You won't see me but if you look quickly you can see the light stand.

Also, notice the TV dinner. Milo changed the lyric to "Tim's Chicked Fried Steak" so I changed the box as well. I took this shot, saved it as a jpeg and then edited it in Photoshop. But in the next shot you can still see the "T" from the original box.

When Deering is eating the donuts and you see the closeup on his face, he has a 5 o'clock shadow. This scene was shot a few hours after the scenes in the break room...where he looks clean shaven. I guess Deering must be able to grow a pretty good beard!

Lastly, when Dan takes the bag out of the trash can, he actually had it hidden on him and pretends to reach into the can. I think this scene got the biggest laugh when it was shown in the 3 services!