Video Production
Between various freelance jobs I usually have a chance to make a project of my own. I just completed work on Got Land, and in 2005 I made Through Corridors and Factories. Both of these projects will be featured on my site ctlewis.com, along with other work. Prior to those two projects, I made the more commercially oriented DVD featured here.
Stupid Little Fellow Notes
In 2003, I made a DVD for The Peak Show, an up-and-coming band at the time. By using footage I shot of performances, rehearsals and interviews with the band members, I put together an hour-long behind-the-scenes look at a band that had just signed with Atlantic Records. As part of the DVD I decided to make a music video of the band performing their song Stupid Little Fellow. My idea was to shoot it with as many cameras as possible so that I could use rapid cuts, yet maintain continuity by being able to match-cut the action. The video was shot with 11 cameras and was lit with 16mm film projectors which were suspended from the ceiling and used as spotlights. With 11 cameras simultaneously shooting a 3-minute song, the amount of footage added up very quickly. This initial part of the production was shot without an audience. The following week at a party in the same location, we shot the reverse angles in order to show the band's interaction with the audience. As I had planned, the footage integrated seamlessly.
I avoided the difficulties of working with several cameras with no sync signal by simply instructing all the camera operators not to stop their cameras during the takes. This allowed me to sync up all the footage just once and then be able to cut back and forth from camera to camera without any problems. Once I completed the final cut, I started to color correct the footage. I quickly found that the varying color and image quality from the different cameras energized the video, so I decided to leave the color as it was.
