I hope everyone has had a great Easter weekend, I spent mine shooting a music video for a band on location at a place called Laragh House.
The location was interesting, it was built in the 1700s, and is almost completely derelict, but the owner lives in it and rents it out to everything from Photographers, Videographers, Parties even shorts and feature films.
It was a cool looking old building, but, was also a serious health hazard as far as I'm concerned. Mold, mushrooms, destroyed woodwork and broken windows throughout the four stories of the building. Walking around it was like a maze, one hallway would lead to a whole new area of the house. Each time I walked up to the top floor to set up or take down equipment, flocks of crows would fly out the windows as I was walking the staircase.
Apparently, it was haunted as well, some rooms had pentagrams drawn out on the floor, where satanic stuff had taken place by people who had rented it out. It was interesting, to say the least. Creepy, but, I was more concerned about getting the video shot.
The owner of the place was really nice, I had a lot of good chats with him over the two days.
This picture was taken on Sunday, which was the day's first shot. Gathering up all 13 extras and 3 band members outside the house.
At this moment in time, not all of them had gotten outside. The extras were all such nice people and were all eager to get the work done.
I really liked this one, it was one of the first shots inside. It reminds me of a slipknot, or system of a down music video.
This one was the second last shot outside, at the end of Sunday with the extras. I recorded this one at 50 frames a second, as it was a guitar being smashed and thrown on the fire. I haven't had a chance to review any of the footage yet, but, I can't wait to get a look over it all.
What's The Video About?
The video had a really good concept. It was about the band members being inside this house, waiting. Some B-Roll shots around the house. Then all these Cult members come out of the woods to arrive at the house, for the band to preach to them as the cult leaders. Feeding them pills and weird pink juice.
One of the shots was interesting up in one of the rooms, where everyone was ballroom dancing. It's quirky and pretty cool.
Issues
I came onto this project to film it and only had one meeting over the phone with the band before shooting. I brought a bunch of equipment to the location and when I arrived I quickly realised the band had very little organized.
To be quite honest, we're lucky we got as much as we did. It seemed like to do the simplest shot, I was spoken to for the best part of 10 or 20 minutes. Patiently nodding and saying "Can we just start, I understand what you went." Then I would be cut off so the band could keep talking. I'm used to the talk and work, think on your feet, we're losing daylight attitude. They on the other hand had to stop everything to over-explain the simplest of things.
The band was under a lot of pressure and stress to get this done and said they didn't want to and shouldn't have to direct it. When I offered multiple times to take the notes and direct them, I was refused.
For example, the sun went down, they complained about the sun being down even though they spent most of the day talking or messing around. I had two duffle bags of lights with me, 2 LEDs and 3 Halogen Redheads. So, of course, I set them up and they told me they only wanted natural light. I would stand there in shock saying, "Well what are we doing then?" The only electricity was on the first floor, so there were no house lights upstairs. Which obviously would have left the frame of each shot black, if I hadn't set my own lights up.
More talking would go on, only to end up continuing the shoot with my lights, after wasting more time.
The shots of the video turned out good, but, due to time-wasting, we weren't able to get everything. So, another day has to be organized to finish it off.
The band had organized another cameraman who was supposed to be there, but he never showed up. He had a particular lens that I didn't have, which was a fisheye. For that reason, a lot of the shots the band wanted weren't "Good enough." I don't know how many times I had to say either. "We're wasting time." or "We have to do what we can, with what we have."
I even offered to try and do something in the post, to try and make the shots look fisheye, but was refused. I didn't particularly want to rely on post. But, I did want to just try and film as much as possible.
Money
I spent 60 Euro to get there and was supposed to get paid 300 Euro for the shoot and edit. Only to find out at the end that the band didn't have the money on them for me. So, I'm now waiting for the money to come through this week. But, they want me to wetransfer them all my footage. Which, I won't be doing until the money comes through.
Final Thoughts
I'm never going to work with this band again, it was my first time doing something for them. As far as I'm concerned, first impressions count. This first impression of working together was a disaster.
It was very stressful and there was a lot of pressure put on my shoulders. Each solution I gave for the problems the band had, was rejected. I don't like working on projects that aren't organized.
I will do a follow-up post with some stills of the footage, as well as an update on how it's coming along.
All pictures in this post were taken by me on a Samsung Galaxy A71
The camera I use is a Canon M50.