So, it’s Monday – February 25th – and the Black Kites just finished shooting our first video.
The video, however, isn’t finished.
I think we’ll have to wait a month or so to see the final product. There’s a little bit of post-production special effect type stuff going on, as well as the all important editing process – but from what I saw during the actual filming part – we’re in good hands.
It was definitely a long weekend though, starting on Saturday around 6 pm – filming some dinner party house party band playing in the living room scenes at Alan’s next door neighbor’s house. Alan and Nicki had switched out a lot of the neighbor’s interiors with odds and ends from Alan’s place – there were Christmas lights strung out along the walls, and empty bottles of wine and candles all about.
So we had about 25 or so extras being the party people – Shelley and Amy included, and they were wonderful – rocking out and dancing – or kinda not rocking and just swaying – depending on the shot – everyone in the band brought a couple of friends – and then some other random “extras” to fill the place out – some of them possibly playing the part of “party goer” a little too well – taking full advantage of the beer and wine we had supplied… easy there youngsters, that ain’t grape juice….
But it’ll all come out great in the end, right?
So on top of the cast, and the band, there were about 9 or 10 people on the crew – so it got a little crowded at times, but amazingly everything seemed to move pretty smoothly – we definitely were a bit off schedule, but considering some video shoot horror stories I’ve heard – we didn’t too badly at all.
It was definitely great working with Director Michael Grodner (http://www.myspace.com/rondohatton) and Justin Coloma as the Director of Photography (http://www.myspace.com/bornonhalloween) – they definitely knew what they were doing, they knew what they wanted us to do – and they worked hard, and made us feel good about working with them – so that was great.
We had wardrobe and make-up, the Producer was on hand, there were assistants to help everyone out and people to take care of the equipment, and people to take care of the talent. And everyone worked together to make it all go as smooth as possible.
We didn’t get out of there until about 1 am on Saturday – I was feeling like I’d been hit by a bus, and even though we didn’t really play that hard – just kind of lightly playing along to the song – over and over again – and then again some more – it’s still pretty draining. It’s almost harder to look like you are totally playing hard as opposed to actually playing hard.
Shelley and Amy decided we should go to the Brite Spot – so we took off into the suddenly rain filled early morning streets while the camera filmed the last of the dinner party scenes – and had slightly Seattle reminiscent breakfast before heading home to crash – and crash we did –
Sunday hits, and I’m still feeling pretty under the weather – which is pretty bad outside, and I make it out and down to Union Station to meet Alan at 4pm.
Most of the filming on Sunday was Evelyn and “the Angel” – Very “Wings Of Desire” touched – but hopefully it will come across as more of a nice artistically respectful tip of the hat to rather than an obvious influence.
So we had a few shots of Evelyn floating down the hallway, floating up in front of a green screen – curious how that will come out – and a couple of shots of sparse party goers – moving from the neighbor’s house into Alan’s for a change of scenery – with a quick Pizza run to Masa to provide some sustenance for the cast and crew – Saturday’s meal was comprised mainly of chips and pretzels for most of us – and it’s eat and film and nibble and film and have a cigarette and film and then it’s getting close to 11 –
so we caravan in five or six cars down to the empty streets and bridge for the last shots to be filmed – thankfully the rain that was hitting earlier has long since vanished, and the clouds and slight puddles on the street only serve to add to the look of the scene – a nice unplanned touch thanks to the weather.
Evelyn and the Angel on the bridge, exchanging wings, or something – this is where Alan and Nicki and I sat in Nicki’s car against the cold, listening to music and waiting for our turn in front of the camera outside.
It was around midnight, the streets were empty, except for the random truck driving into it’s warehouse home, and right beside the bridge we set up in the middle of the street, single shots on each of us – and it was pretty surreal – playing drums by myself in the middle of downtown LA at midnight.
Then Nicki and her bass, Alan and his guitar…
And then we’re done – waiting for some animated snow to fall over us, waiting for the wings to appear on film, waiting for the song to come together after being broken up into a hundred moving visual digital snapshots.
And we wait to see if we will see what we heard.
mochaLouder 
