Re: Coloured Animal - official video for "Protest the Sky" OMG
OK
I already told you what I thought of the song back when I first heard the whole album, so my comments are on the video alone.
1. Yous guys actually look pretty cool. Good job on that.
2. I like the abandoned highway shots. Great location. Big sky there, too. Appropriate.
3. I really wish you had brought and set up amps. I know lots of videos don't show amps. I don't care. Amps look cool. A mic for your singer, too. That way you could have done the continuity problem thing and shown him singing both with and without the mic at different times.
4. All the fades. Too many fades. Really. Fast cuts between shots looks so much better than dozens and dozens of fades. A quick fade from the highway set to the girls with the car would be OK because it's like you're traveling to a different time and place, but all the rest aren't a good device. The overlay for the end with both of you guys playing was cool, but the rest.. no.
5. Surely you could have found at least one more hot girl. I mean, why not?
6. Nice job on the girls. You should have shown more of the girls and gone to quick cuts for the live footage. It almost feels weighted in the other direction. Your song is a soundtrack to the events depicted in the scripted part! Besides, by showing more of the "movie" part of the video, you'd avoid any awkward redundancies in the live performance footage.
7. Good job.
Much appreciated!
1. Really? Thanks.
2. I love the location. It's one of the coolest things in Metro Vancouver. If you look up Vancouver International Airport in Google Maps, you'll see it's on an island in the Fraser delta. To the north of that island is a smaller island attached by a causeway. This is Iona Island, and it is home to a sewage treatment plant, and a beach/park. A long man-made spit extends southwest from the beach far out into the sea. This is actually a sewer outflow pipe from the treatment plant, and it has a gravel pathway that extends all along it. This is where we did the band shoot. We went just far enough out onto the spit so that you couldn't see the rest of Iona Island in the shot. We did the shoot at 8 AM on a Sunday to ensure there weren't many people out there, but there were a couple cyclists and dog walkers who found us very entertaining. We got hassled by a park ranger for not having a film permit, but he let us stay as long as we promised to wrap before 10 AM (which we did).
3. The location being where it was, it was hard enough to get the drum kit and camera rig out there. We had to carry everything at least a quarter mile from the parking lot to the location. Hauling three large amps, including Greg's ridiculously heavy SWR Redhead (seriously, I think the speakers in that thing must have lead baskets or something) would have been a nightmare. We decided that the only people who would care about amps were other musicians, so we nixed them. I do regret not plugging a cable into my guitar though - that looks a bit weird, and would have been an easy fix.
4. I kind of agree on the fades, and Kev's first cut (he directed and edited) actually had waaaay more if you can believe it.
Side note: unlike with our music, I intentionally kept my involvement in the video production to a minimum just to keep things simple. I told Kev "just tell me where and when to show up". I don't agree with every single choice he made, but
on the whole I think it's an excellent video, and definitely much better than I could have done.
5. Those are the only two we knew who a. could take direction, and b. were willing to work for free. The Jimi girl is actually a film industry pro who has worked on a lot of the TV shows shot around here.
6. Again, I kind of agree, but it wasn't my video.
7. Thanks! Hey, does DoB shoot videos?
