When Jared Mullens messaged me in regards to doing a film photography photoshoot for his band Holy Roller Baby I was taken by surprise. I often get compliments on my film photography and am asked about the process but it was new to hear from someone looking for an analog specific photoshoot. These days people tend to ask for digital photoshoot because of the cost of you know… film. After getting our introductions out of the way we continued a dialogue about the band and the image that his band is looking to portray. Once I gave the band a listen I immediately took to their 70’s aesthetic and had a clear understanding why Mullens was looking for a film aesthetic. After mulling over what the shoot might entail, I thought to myself about how I had always wanted to work on a traditional music video for a rock band. In the past, my music video experience has been projected towards hip-hop and rap where there are more verite elements that are congruent to project budgets. During our correspondence I suggested to Jared that I happen to be a video producer by trade and that it would be “cool” to make something for Holy Roller Baby.
Weeks later I was green lit to begin production on the Holy Roller Baby’s first single entitled Ravings at Your Window. At first I thought about how the video should be shot entirely on Super 8mm film since that is where I conversation began. I quickly realized that I would be introducing more problems then it is probably worth so I stuck to my trusty Canon C200 for the bulk of the music video. My personal compromise was that I would shoot the video with a set of old vintage Nikor lenses with a set of Tiffen Promist 1/4 to give it a semblance of a vintage aesthetic. It was here where I found my love for the Nikkor 135mm f/2.8. The funny thing is that I have had this lens in my kit for sometime but I have never really thought to use it in any of my digital production cameras. Fast forward to today and I am using it as much as I can. The truth is that I am just so burnt out on the Sigma 18-35mm Art lens that myself and the rest of the world included seems to have. Don’t get me wrong, it is a fantastic lens but it is so sterile that it has a seeming lack of character that leave me wanting more, especially on creative projects like music videos. Another item that I felt necessary to add to my vintage aesthetic were some classic four pointed star filters for the band’s performance. Having never used them in video, I was not sure where I would land once I was in the edit but I am actually really pleased with the results. With out the filters, it would have left the performance section feeling visually flat. Sure there is plenty of head banging with both rocking and rolling but I need those sweet starry COLORS to make our talent pop.
Once settled on the technical look of the video I began to assemble a sordid cast of individuals to make this piece come to life. The first person I approached about helping me with the project was my co-producer Drew Hodges. It took no time to convince Drew what the video would be since we have a consistent working relationship that stems from a shared visual language in cinema. He knew immediately that we were to make a ‘straight’ or ‘old school’ style music video. Show the band performing and tell a linear story about a meet-cute scenario, thats it, done. In fact, the original ask for the video was to show just the band performing but I could not help but want to insert some semblance of a narrative. From there I went on to ask Noel Mathew, another can-doer and DP if he was interested in shooting the studio photography for the video. Soon enough Noel was throwing on his Red Redemption hat and was firing away at all kinds on questions about lights and diffusion. To which my response is “yes lets do that.” Noel is also to thank for his excellent recommendation of Gisela Guajardo who would become our Art Director. She is an absolute ace and managed to procure all the props needed for the video despite how random they may have seemed. My personal favorite set piece was the vintage TV which would go on to travel with us during the narrative portion of the shoot.
Our first hiccup during the production was securing a location to shoot the band in a studio environment. We initially had an in at a local theater in Mesquite, TX but a week before the shoot we were notified about a schedule conflict with the venue. As many people know, scheduling is the most difficult part of any production. To get people to agree to a time to be in the same place at once can feel like moving mountains. Under the pressure of a set schedule I began thinking about options. I then chose to resort to our default production environment at Prudential. This former Fujifilm corporate office now turned empty warehouse would once again serve as the studio for our next video. Prudential is always an interesting place to shoot at to say the least. The space is great to work in but there are some inherent issues such as the lack of air conditioning, internet, spotty electric, and furniture. HOWEVER, this is the world of video production! We make do! hah.
The day before the shoot we prepped Prudential by setting and testing lights in various conditions to make sure that we could nail the dynamics of a band moving in and out of frame. My main focus was to give the space a studio feel by allowing the background to drop off to complete darkness behind the band. We also decided to add an LED array behind the band to help provide separation and ensure that the band did not fall off into the infinite abyss that we were shooting in. Once the lights and cameras were set, we were all prepped for another great shoot at Prudential and I do not mean that sarcastically. Despite Prudential being its own mess we managed to pull off the studio shoot without a hitch. The band performed great and Jared took instruction like a pro but more than anything I believe it was fun for everyone involved. The weird part about video production is that all too often we take ourselves too seriously and this shoot was a great reminder that it is important to just have fun. Having done so much corporate production I have become so used to being business forward and it was nice to sort of unwind and “get shit done” with a great cast of individuals. After wrapping on a clean studio shoot, Drew and I began phase two of the production which would be the narrative portion.
The narrative portion proved to be a bit more difficult than initially perceived but that is by no means a bad thing. Our first and biggest hang up turned out to be finding the truck that would be featured in the video. We knew we wanted a vintage pickup that would give off a classic Texas vibe; but where does someone go who for such a specific set piece? Jared and I put our feelers out on the Facebook where Jared then ended up getting connected with Jack Boyd of Boyd Customs based out of Denton, TX. It was incredibly convenient that Jack’s shop would be located out in Denton considering that we would be shooting the narrative portion in the nearby town of Sanger, TX. Even more coincidental was that Jack used to live right next to the country road where we would shoot the driving sequences on. After we secured a truck we began searching for a female lead. We lucked out big time by chancing across a Trees Marie of Trees Marie and the Heavy Hearts who volunteered to be our hitchhiker for the video. Trees was absolute class to work with and with her background in performing arts there was no wonder that she would be fantastic to work with. Finally, we needed to lock down our male talent and this leaned a bit more in to the unknown. Without any formal casting call we ended up choosing a fresh Dallas transplant by the name of Edward Houser. Edward has an amazing James Dean look that immediately caught my attention but without an acting reel to look at I was unsure how he would preform. It was later revealed to me (on set) that Edward has formal acting experience in theater and to no surprise he also was fantastic to film with.
Once we had talent and props secured (Drew and I drove out grab that 1,000lbs TV), we set out early one morning for our shoot in the country with our equipment. There was a lot of room for error on this shoot and for some miraculous reason everything sort of just worked out. Some of the issues with shooting in the country involve having no AC power. That meant that we were not able to use lights and we had to make sure that we made the most use out of my single C200 battery. On top of that, the production crew was down to just Drew and I so that meant that we had to be firing on all cylinders. The only issue we ran in to in this instant was that we were supposed to all meet up at a church by the road we would be filming on, but while we were waiting for talent to show up the church decided they did not want us waiting in their parking lot. Fair enough, we found a public park and all was well. Lucky that it was so close to where we would be shooting.
We then set up by the train tracks and got everyone in to place we began doing our runs. Shot the driving sequences about five times in five different ways. Shot reverse shot, cut aways, and hood cam would provide us with the coverage that we need. Now we just need to make sure that we accomplish our vague plot device which included a polaroid. Yet another avenue for things to go wrong. Considering that I was using a polaroid camera purchased off eBay (cheap) and I froze the instant film that it uses (don’t do that) there was a level of uncertainty that the film would not even work and that would not have ending that we planned. The whole idea is that the guy driving the truck falls for the girl he picks up and then at the end he longingly reminisces about the girl who stole his heart so to speak. It would have been a lot harder to do a call back to that without the polaroid.
After we wrapped production we set sail on the fun filled world of post production. Post is always its own beast and is usually riddled with instances of fixing issues. For this particular production post seemed to be one of the easiest segments to work on. Drew was supposed to run the edit on this project but I found myself clipping away at the project in my free time. This harkens back to the nature of the shoot just being ‘fun’. After my film grain overlays were set, multicam sequences, narrative strung out, and TV intro masked, we were all set for delivery. It was great to be able to have the creative freedom to work on a project like this with Holy Roller Baby. Looking back, I do not think Jared or HRB even had any notes on the delivered edit. There may have been a few things about where to put a credit or title (I have slept since then) but the delivery could not have been smoother. At the time of this post, Holy Roller Baby’s music video Ravings At Your Window has clocked in more than 70,000 views. Im not one to crunch Youtube views but that is pretty good for this Chalupa.
