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I never learn... any ideas to get me out of this mess...

G

gorillaonabike

So I vowed not to do anymore horribly low-budget music vids and then I was persuaded by a nice meal, a lift over there and back, a good looking location and creative freedom. On top of that, the artist told me they would organise everything right down to the talent. I thought, OK, I'm not doing anything meaningful in the morning so I'll do it. What could go wrong?

I never learn...

Anyhow, I am in a situation where the talent didn't turn up, the artist turned up incredibly late (so there was no shoot time etc...) and I am now stuck with a tiny bit of hastily shot footage of a singer playing an instrument and singing along.

My thought is to go multi-screen, split the screen into different bits, move the bits around the screen, cut back to fullscreen occasionally but essentially try to make it interesting through using multi-screen. However, I've never seen a really good multi-screen vid. The ones I have seen are usually along these lines:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2RA0vsZXf8

Or just pretty dull.

Has anyone seen a good one they could share?
 
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and I am now stuck with a tiny bit of hastily shot footage of a singer playing an instrument and singing along.
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What was the original vision for the vid? Was is supposed to be more of a 'just showing the band play' kind of thing the begin with? If so, then, hastily shot and lacking variety though it may be, at least you won't be far off from the general concept.

If not, and it was supposed to be more creative/narrative, is there any possibility of a reshoot? Or going out and getting b-roll on your own? Does the artist want their face all over it? You can always grab a pretty girl actor and do some narrative/b-roll with her instead...
 
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gorillaonabike said:
the artist told me they would organise everything right down to the talent. (...) Anyhow, I am in a situation where the talent didn't turn up, the artist turned up incredibly late (so there was no shoot time etc...) and I am now stuck with a tiny bit of hastily shot footage of a singer playing an instrument and singing along.
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Stop. Just stop.

The organisers failed to deliver what they promised, leaving you with jack-all to work with. You're going to spend many stressful hours trying to compensate & work around their shortcomings, and you'll almost certainly end up with a POS video... and that's what you'll be remembered for, when it airs. Noone will know about (or even care) what hurdles had to be jumped through - you'll just be that music video guy who makes shitty/boring videos, as far as the viewing public goes... and that will also play into future potential paychecks/gigs, too.

Tell them sorry, you weren't given what you needed and were expecting. The only person that loses in this situation is you.

:)

.
 
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Although I agree with Zen, if for personal reasons - like practicing how to make silk purses out of sows ears and polishing turds, or experimenting with your toys - you want to continue with this, a few ideas.

Find interesting pieces of what exists and hyper-pixelate, posterize, screw around with all of your effects and take them to radical extremes; even layer them.

Go through the lyrics and find stuff on the Prelinger Archives to fill the gaps, do the above to that footage as well.



I work with lots of singer/songwriters who have mediocre writing skills, have even less talent on their instruments (if they even play one) and they can barely sing. I somehow have to make something they will like out of all that crap. Those "challenges" do give me idea fodder for the talented folks.
 
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What category or kind of music is it?

Can you provide us with a (password protected) five/ten second snippet of what you got to work with? A typical shot?



And I also support a reshoot of this FUBAR cluster f#ck spectacle.
 
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I'm with Steve on this one. If they failed to live up to their end of the bargain, you shouldn't finish the video. Maybe you give them a second chance, let them know that you don't have the footage needed to deliver a compelling video, but maybe you're interested in a re-shoot.

That being said, did I read your post correctly? You "weren't doing anything meaningful in the morning"? In the MORNING?!!! I hope you don't think that a good music video can be shot in a single morning, let alone without any real planning or preparation. You kinda walked into this mess.

Musicians don't typically understand what goes into filmmaking. Their art requires just as much skill as ours, but theirs is much more immediate and in-the-moment. They can fly by the seat of their pants, so they don't get that we can't really do that. The point I make is that you can't rely on them to do the planning, cuz they'll predictably not plan things with the same detail that we would.
 
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Stop. Just stop.

The organisers failed to deliver what they promised, leaving you with jack-all to work with. Tell them sorry, you weren't given what you needed and were expecting. The only person that loses in this situation is you.
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^^ This. Just this.
 
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Re-shoot, or cut your ties. They didn't live up to their end, and so your only option is to reshoot at their cost.

Unless you're not getting paid, in which case why you have already put so much effort into trying to save it?

I spent two days Focus Pulling on a music video recently. The artist and her management were present the whole time, and had agreed and signed off on the initial concept. After the first cut, they hated it, and we had to spend another two days shooting other stuff. Probably 10 seconds total from the first two days made it into the final cut.

If it had've been a production company screw up, then the production company would have had to wear the reshoot cost. As it was simply a change of mind/heart, the cost had to be borne by the artist.

Similarly, you can either reshoot at their cost, or explain that there's no possible way you can create anything decent given what happened, and either cut ties or just deliver whatever you can deliver.

The flip side is I hope you kept them abreast of the issues at hand. If you promised them that you could salvage something awesome out of it, and now can't figure it out, it's a slightly different story.

Also +1 to CF, I don't know how you could've delivered much more than a hastily shot performance video just from one morning of shooting anyway (unless your morning is a 5am-12/1pm 'morning')
 
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Think I will do a combo of Alcove's suggestion (Prelinger's a great idea, I have already selected the movie I want to use) and multi-screen. This could tell a story, it's easy to cut and takes no more time than I originally set aside. It's a solid idea.

And I've just discovered a movie I loved from my youth on there! This is a 1950s US flick which moved and transfixed me as a kid. This is amaaaaaazing. I loved that movie.

And it has a 'Creative Commons license: Public Domain' tag!!!!! This means I can just use this for free! Wow!

Screening room, here I come...
 
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gorillaonabike said:
Annoyingly, FCP 7.03 crashed, somehow the autosave had stopped working and deleted everything. Arrrghhhh....
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Arrrghhhh.... !
BashKeyboard.gif


For the love of God and all things Holy I often loath, just absolutely loath, computers + doing the same job twice again.

Gah!!!!!
 
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Did it again... arrghhhh... Why did it turn off the auto backup facility????? And how is it that it kills the 'proper' saved version?????? Phenomenally annoying that FCP 7.03 isn't supported by Apple any longer, hence the sudden crashes, instability, glitches...

For sale...

One computer, with FCP 7.03 and Apple's latest OS (which doesn't support FCP 7.03). A few, hammer shaped dents in the keyboard, a smashed screen with the imprint of a boot in the middle, damaged case where it was thrown at the wall and a motherboard which appears to have had coffee poured all over it. Trust me, it'll be better this way.

Otherwise, this is the third attempt at a rough cut. So you get an idea what you're looking at, it's obviously as rough as h@ll, has been put together in 30 minutes late at night by a really, really, really annoyed editor who is desperately waiting for the latest version of FCP X to come out. And also, if you don't like the concept, blame Alcove Audio as it was his idea:

Obviously needs a ton of stuff doing to it but as a basic concept, I think it has potential.
 
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Great to hear you have found a solution!

Otherwise:

Shoot yourself waiting with your phone.
Show textmessages that the talent isn't showing up.
Show the musician arriving late (or a message)
A few black screens with 'missing scene'.
And a few piece of the footage you shot.

It will be crappy, but it explains it by itself ;)

Actually I agree with Zen Steve: the 'client' didn't meet his end of the deal.
Apperently he doesn't really care about the video at all.
At least, that's what arriving late on your own music video shoot means to me: he doesn't care.
He's not serious.

And now you are going to try and put all the extra effort in this when he doesn't care?
 
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