https://youtu.be/z9n2YGhgydU
Skot Shaw approached me about creating another music video using a clip shot by John Betten during a recent open mic performance at Ashbary Coffee House. I was a bit confused as first because the clip was of a partial song...and one I was less familiar with of the Leper catalog. Skot liked how that footage turned out and how it looked with some gradient effect to make it black and white so he wanted it incorporated into a full video for the song "If I Ever Fall In Love" off of Leper's Dark Places album.
Skot Shaw approached me about creating another music video using a clip shot by John Betten during a recent open mic performance at Ashbary Coffee House. I was a bit confused as first because the clip was of a partial song...and one I was less familiar with of the Leper catalog. Skot liked how that footage turned out and how it looked with some gradient effect to make it black and white so he wanted it incorporated into a full video for the song "If I Ever Fall In Love" off of Leper's Dark Places album.
I took the clip then synced it up to the studio track of the song and that's where the project sat for a couple of months due to the busy-ness of life.
We made plans to shoot some footage but unfortunately Skot's wife Rachel had an emergency surgery which derailed those plans and once again, the busy-ness of life kept us from rescheduling. We did eventually work out a time after I got off work while Skot would be his studio in The Empathy Crypt and captured a few more takes of Skot performing the video. this footage was filmed using a Canon Rebel T6s. This was convenient because the studio is in the basement of where I work!
I sat down to edit the pieces together which didn't take too long. I decided to add in at the end a clip I had from my CrossTour CR-900 of the Blue Cross Blue Shield building in Chicago lit up as a heart. I also reused some shots of the keyboard playing to fill in some space in the middle of the song where there was an instrumental break.
I tried to match the appearance of the footage I shot at The Empathy Crypt with the footage shot by John and felt it was a pretty good match though Skot felt that I needed to do more to degrade the quality of the footage a bit more. The first draft I made, didn't have enough of John's footage for Skot's liking so I went back and increased what I used from the clip John had shot then added more effects to degrade the quality of the footage.
I added in the "bad film" effect to each clip separately, increasing the dust, hair and line elements to the max. I then added a second layer of "bad film" effect to the entire project along with the vignette effect to blur the edges a bit.
In the end, it was a fairly simple project to create and seems to have met the expectation of Skot. His vision was a bit different that how it turned out...he hoped I would use the majority of the clip John had shot where I blended it in with the footage I shot. While I did use more of John's clip at Skot's request, there was discussion to do more. After explaining my position on how I got to where it was, and suggesting that maybe it would work better for Skot to create this one on his own to achieve his vision, Skot decided that the project was good enough for him.
Footage filmed using a Canon Rebel T6s in The Empathy Crypt and taken from a CrossTour CR-900 along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, Illinois by Joel A. Swanson. Other footage was shot at Ashbary Coffee House during an Open Mic in Willow Springs by John Betten. The title was created using Motion 4 on a Macbook by Joel A. Swanson. The projected was compiled and edited using Final Cut Pro on a Mac Mini by Joel A. Swanson. Skot Shaw directed the project.
