For a recent music video for wedding band, The Score (www.thescoreband.co.uk) I came up with a concept of shooting across 5 different locations (to show their versatility) but to make each transition from location to location completely seamless. I wanted the audience to be kept guessing about what was about to happen.
Partly this is because as a filmmaker you always want to try something a bit different but also because I'm conscious of how difficult it is to keep an audience engaged and whenever I think about video showreels for function bands I always see the same thing.
Star Cloth. Staging. Rudimentary backlit Lighting Setup.
To prove my point please see the examples below. (I should state that both band and production of the videos below absolutely fine - they're just all identical videos...)
Now, sure, it's a promo video and it does what it says on the tin and that is absolutely fine if you just want to be 'another wedding band' but what if you want to stand out? Be memorable?
Well then let's think a little bit more creatively shall we? Have a hook, have something visual that someone will remember you for. Be beautiful.
I've been fortunate enough to work with a few bands now that want to think that way and that is what I like to be known for.
THE CHALLENGE
7 Songs, 5 Locations, 4 Costume Changes. 1 Day.
The locations were close together at least.
The technique of combining shots together to make one complete seamless edit is one I'd done before on a short film called The Host shot with Red Creative Film (https://www.redcreativefilm.co.uk/)
But that was filmed with a different crew, so this time working with Ash Connaughton as D.O.P we went out for a recce and some test filming using a Panasonic GH4 to see if we could make the edits work on locations.
Below are the clips we shot to use see if we could blend them together. (Largely this involved me being on camera repeating the word 'Sing' a lot to avoid actually singing on camera... The plan was to use my back as an edit point, the thought being that my jacket had the least amount of detail to differentiate between shots.
Moving from the car park:
To the Bandstand
And the completed 360 edit looked like this.
Then we needed to get the lead vocalist, a lovely chap called David, out of a recording studio and into a van, shot at a different location. The test for this was to use the line of a fence for a cut point. A very tricky shot as it had to be timed precisely to the music!
Leaving the studio door.
Mock walking to the van.
The completed edit:
There is one obvious mistake in the above edit but the test was edited in 10 minutes and you don't spot the mistake the first time round, so I was happy!
With all this completed I was prepped and ready to film.
The only thing that could go wrong was the weather and fortunately that just about held off.
The best thing about this video for me was that the day before the lead female vocalist suggested she'd like to have some costume changes. I hadn't planned for those as they increased the amount of seamless transitions to allow her to get changed.
There's one transition here that's so slick even I forget it's in there until I realise she's wearing something else!
Please enjoy the final result and if you ever want to stand out from the crowd please do drop me a line.