One of our favorite projects in recent years was creating a music video for composer/producer Victor Johnson. Projects like this are so fun because there is so much room for a team to be creative and collaborate to align for one vision — even in the middle of a pandemic.
Victor reached out with an almost complete version of the song he wanted to create the music video for – this was self-financed by Victor himself and with that in mind a reasonable budget had to be established. We needed to plan efficient shoot days with a smaller, nimble crew and work to squeeze every ounce of creative out of every dollar put into this project. Victor had a broad vision for the music video, which featured a young couple experiencing the highs and lows of being in a relationship. This included multiple locations, wardrobe changes and one huge choreographed dance routine between our two very talented dancers acting as our young couple. With detailed planning we crammed all this into two busy shoot days.
Our nimble crew included Victor as the Executive Producer, Maribeth Romslo as Producer, myself (Matthew) as Director, Corey as Director of Photography, Sarah Drews handling hair, makeup and wardrobe, Victor’s wife acted as Art Director and Jeff Munter joining the crew as a Production Assistant. Many of us had to wear an assortment of different “hats” in this production to make our tight timeline for production go off without a hitch.
In pre-production we identified an apartment complex with multiple great locations. The complex had a recreation room that could serve as both a kitchen scene, a living room scene with multiple set ups, and a rooftop sequence. The apartment complex also had a large basement space that could be a great backdrop for our dance sequence and then our club scene. So suffice to say, this apartment complex was a slam dunk for our production, being able to have all these different scenes able to be filmed in the same vicinity. The last big hurdle to overcome was finding a spot we could use to replicate an airport – on a previous production I produced we had a identical need to create an airport setting without renting out space at an actual airport (the logistics and fees for that request are out of this world). On the previous production we filmed at the Union Depot in St. Paul and with this music video we did the exact same.
With our locations dialed in, talent and crew booked, schedule fleshed out, we were ready for production.
Even though our apartment complex location made logistics a bit easier, even moving between multiple scenes, setups and wardrobe changes, it takes a ton of time and energy to move from scene to scene. A precise schedule and hard-working crew made out production days go off without issue. Corey and I working together for years as Director and DP certainly made our days more efficient, effective and creative. And of course, with our production days, our goal is to have some fun along the way and ensure our client has a blast piecing together their content in production.
With post production, Victor provided the final mix for the song he officially titled Gonna Leave. With this final version, Corey jumped in as editor and colorist to push this project past the finish line. Corey had to weave the narrative elements of the couple in their relationship with their dance sequence, which was a more artistic expression of the trials within their relationship. The results on the first edit were awesome – Victor, myself and Corey were all so pleased with the first rough cut, which meant that getting to a final version only took small tweaks, audio fine tuning and color grading.
In the end, everyone involved in this project did fantastic work and the results are within the music video. We took an idea out of Victor’s brain and turned it to a visual masterpiece. Check out the results below.
