Leper Blues – Holy Roller Baby

As is the case with most of these productions, the biggest challenge was securing location and talent. This particular shoot called for a group of children with one primary antagonist and a magician who would be pummeled. Securing the magician turned out to be no huge issue considering that we enlisted the trusty Steven Heck for the position. Overall, I have been thrilled by the performances that we have got out of Steve. We go back to my days at UNT and it always helps to collaborate with someone who you have a background with. From there, we tracked down parents in our friends network to volunteer their child’s time for a chance to be in the video. One thing that I have learned is that this Youtube generation loves being in videos. It really did not take a whole lot of convincing to get the kids to want to be in the piece. As is with directing in general, the challenge was trying to communicate the performance to the talent, but in this case I was trying to do so with kids and their parents.

Literally days before our scheduled shoot we were scrambling to secure location. Whenever we would think we had something secured there would be some hiccup that forced us to reconsider. We lucked out last minute when Jarred found a location through some tertiary connection here in Dallas. It was certainly convenient and the home owner had the space for us to do what we needed. As an added plus, the family had three kids that were more than happy to be in the video. That helped address another concern of mine that this birthday party shoot would look too lean with only a few kids in attendance.

From there things were simple enough. Arrive the day of the shoot with prepped gear, sip my coffee, and bask in the 105 degree heat. OH yea thats right. The 105 degree heat. It was excruciatingly hot that day and it almost broke me. Suddenly I was enveloped in the logistics of keeping crew and talent (with their parents) hydrated and healthy in what potentially would be a situation involving heat exhaustion. It felt like I was constantly juggling the needs of the individuals with the arcing concerns of the shoot itself. People do come first but between keeping the band in shape and the kids alive, it was a lot to juggle. The upshot is that I did the weather report before the shoot and added it to my nightly call sheet. I then made the needed preparations before the day of the shoot to make the experience… bearable? Our grip, Jorge Steins, was kind enough to supply a canopy for shade while I supplied box fans and water.

As the birthday cake baked in the hot Texas sun, we rolled the needed takes in what I deemed to be the most considerate order for our talent. Since we were working with kids I opted to film with them mid morning so that they were not forced on to a set too early. I felt that we were already asking a lot of them to begin with so that was one of a series of compromises to get the best performances out of the younger talent. Instead, we shot with the band first thing in the morning when the temperature was the coolest. A nice temperate 90 degrees. We rolled take after take and hoped for the best considering we were shooting multicam. I know there are directors out there that have all of their shots blocked out for specific moments but I am not that guy. Especially when it comes to performance and working with bands. You just have to have these guys do what they do best. Perform.

We wrapped the band after we filmed a few masters featuring the magician and kids. From there we went on to shoot the b narrative of the kids forming a coup to murder the magician. The concept I had in mind was tonally similar to a 90’s Capri Sun commercial where the kids incite a riot after listening to some rock music. Our first shot we began with was this awesome shot of the kids birthday party table posed as The Last Supper. It didn’t make the final cut, for reasons, but you can check it out in the image below. It was also clear that our main child actor certainly fit the part of playing the hellion that we needed him to be. In some ways you could consider him ‘method’. It was a challenge to get him to comply with the needed eye patch for the video but that really is something that comes with the territory when working with kids. After about and hour or so in, I noticed that the talent began to waiver so it was a sign that it was time to move. I decided that we needed to murder the magician. Steve was awesome during this and was totally up for the task of having himself covered in blood. The kids of course were thrilled to get blood sprayed on them while beating up the magician.

The beatdown was great. Steve was convincing, the kids had fun, it was time to move on. Once we wrapped on a few inserts with our eye-patch wearing antagonist we shot our inserts with Steve. These were a series of shots with just Steve in them and reacting. Once again, huge props to Steve, the dude kept a mixture of fake blood and cake in his mouth of a period of time that goes beyond see-food. Magic, blood, cake, we had everything we need and it was time to wrap up. I would be lying to say if we were not all collectively exhausted. The crew and I had been working for hours in the heat with no real reprieve outside of crushing water after water. I strictly recall cleaning cake remnants off the property owner’s backyard table and burning my hand on its surface in the process. There is one specific moment I recall where Steve is staggering towards the air conditioning of his car whilst covered in cake and fake blood. A car slowly pulls up beside him and you can see their look of astonishment as they drove by. Despite the heat exhaustion, it was in that moment that I decided this video was something that was different. And at the end of the day, the biggest compliment I can give something is by saving “I haven’t seen that before.”