Towards the end of 2017, I was approached by one of my favorite Seattle musicians, Emily Donohue, with a pair of music video concepts. Emily had an album in the works and her record label was looking for some promotional material for the release, sometime in 2018. I was pretty excited about the opportunity. I had been slowly upgrading and collecting equipment geared towards creating stylized, film-like productions. While I had been doing quite a few live performance videos recently, I was itching to get out and do something a little more on the creative side.
The two concepts that Emily had created were fairly different from each other. One, with a strong narrative, had the potential to capture some attention if done correctly. The other, focusing more on the aesthetics of the area and required less "acting". In the end Emily chose the second option and I started scouting locations. One of the stylistic(and musical) inspirations that Emily had given me came from the early 90s show, Twin Peaks. I had never actually watched Twin Peaks, but the show seems to come up in conversation in the Seattle area every couple months or so. I started watching the series and couldn't stop. Using this homework as my excuse, I binge-watched the entire series, including the 2017 reboot. Since many of the scenes of the show were shot in the PNW, I figured we could capture some of the same beautiful vistas and moods that had been featured in 4:3 format 25 years ago.
With my Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera rolling in RAW 3:1 at 60fps we started our shoot. The warm October wind was giving me a few issues with my steadycam, but when 60fps footage is slowed down to 24fps, the slight wobbles and drifting aren't very noticeable. With some epic lens flares in front of the backdrop of Mt. Si, we had out first scene complete.
The rest of the day was spent in various locations near North Bend, WA in a mix of fog and sunshine. The weather couldn't have worked out any better. Other creative minds felt the same way and we ran into a slight bottleneck at a favorite local photo location. We were only asked once if we were out taking senior photos. With memory cards full and batteries drained, we called it a day.
The following evening we met again, this time, in Seattle at Golden Gardens. Shooting at a popular beach in the city is a little more difficult than outside of town in the mountains. With some trial and error, we avoided the gawking onlookers and hammock dwellers that seemed to multiply by the minute. The wind died down slightly and the temps cooled. The shoot and the video ended with a slow sunset over the Olympics.
Through the next couple of weeks I edited and color graded the raw footage into the final product. Shooting and editing music vids is one of my favorite creative pastimes. Keep an eye out for some projects that I currently have in the works!