Sup? Trev here, and welcome to another blog post! In this post we wanted to give you guys an overview of how we made our latest music video for our cover of ONE OK ROCK’s “Clock Strikes”. Hope you enjoy this little BTS read!
行こう！(That means “let’s go” in Japanese 🗾)
The Big Idea
We wanted to challenge ourselves to put together more of a live show “vibe” to the video with a bunch of different camera angles and cutting between them, more similar to your typical music video. Their original ONE OK ROCK video is kind of a similar style, just showing the band playing and cutting from take to take around so we wanted to keep it similar, almost as an homage to the original video. This wasn’t all we initially planned though.
At first, we wanted to make it a mix of live footage as well as B-roll of our favorite Japanese related things like going out for Ramen or watching Anime. It was right around Cherry Blossom season 🌸 so we were gonna film us walking through a park, eating some ramen at our favourite spot in Vancouver, watching some anime, and spreading out all of our souvenirs from our past trips and slow-panning over them. In the end, we decided to cut these out and keep it more focused on the live video as shooting in a restaurant may be difficult or not allowed AND for one other teensie weensie TINY thing that popped up.
You know, that thing called COVID…
YUP, COVID hit the week we were going to shoot and the entire world went into lockdown 😭. We couldn’t leave our houses, we couldn’t hang out with Wade, and we most definitely couldn’t go out to a park or the room we were going to film in. We basically just had to wait the weeks (more like months) out until Canada finally announced that they would be loosening up the lockdown restrictions and we were able to go out in small groups, HOORAY!
While waiting did suck, it gave us more time to plan and ALSO, made time for my new custom Kiesel guitar 🎸 to arrive, which showed up literally DAYS before we actually shot the video! How lucky is that?!?! Clearly, it was meant to be, and also a very important reason to hold off the shoot in general. It just really wouldn’t have been a good music video without that drop-dead gorgeous hunk of wood and metal in it 😎
Location, Location, Location
I guess I should touch on how we actually found the space we shot in. It was a happy coincidence that Beth and I’s local church had JUST moved into a new space the week or two before the lockdown began which had this amazing side room that was completely white and empty. It was so versatile for many different types of rentals. Our pastor IMMEDIATELY brought us into the room when we arrived and was like “great for a music video RIGHT?!?!” haha. But he was right, it was and we will actually probably use it again in the future. It just worked out really well for all parties included, we really lucked out on this one.
Alright, that’s how we found the room, COVID lockdown has been lightened, let’s move on to the planning and day of the shoot.
The Pre-Production
So a few nights before the shoot we all met up in the evening with our friend Matt (he shot the My Affliction video as well) to discuss overall final style ideas and come up with a rough shot list of anything specific we wanted filmed. We decided we were just going to play through the song multiple times with the camera focused on specific things each time (like me playing a solo or Beth going for her scream in the bridge).
- Once with a static tripod shot – The camera didn’t move and just filmed all three of us from the front all the way through
- Once of the band together with Matt weaving in and out of all of us
- Once of each of the band members at the center of attention
- Once of the bridge backing vocals without instruments (the dark silhouette part)
- A few shot at higher FPS so we could make them slow motion. Fun fact: If you film at 60 FPS (frames per seconds) and slow it down to the standard 30 FPS, you get a slow motion effect that’s easier to time and more natural looking)
Pretty simple right?
We actually did a practice run or “laser light jam session” at home the same night of our brainstorm sesh as Beth and I had found a smoke machine and laser on Amazon. That let Matt get a rough idea of how the filming was gonna work in the smoky, hazy, dark atmosphere. We took some test videos/photos and it seemed to work really well so at this point we were all set for the day-of.
Next, we will cover the day of the shoot. Everything from renting gear, getting into the space, and a few fun stories from setup. Hope you’re looking forward to it!
Read Part 2 Now: