Another key piece of the puzzle revolved around the general image of the actual performers themselves, as opposed to the instruments or equipment. The clothing was always going to be crucial, and we made sure that the house style throughout was a combination of white and black, with the type of clothing being smart-casual style. This suits the style and the song itself; the band themselves appear, for the Crash Love album period at least, to be showing a preference to suits and smarter clothing, for example, waistcoats, shirts, ties, jackets, smart shoes etc. Look below at a picture from an awards show, and their two most recent music videos, both for singles off of the Crash Love album:
Note in particular the guitarist, Jade Puget's (far right of shot) choice of clothing - smart dark suit with white shirt, with the collar high. The overall style is of smart clothing, but with a feeling of looseness - jackets not done up, collars up, a sense of casualness pervading. With that in mind, we ensured that all performing in the video fitted to this house style, with Jacob Peeling in particular almost apeing Puget to a tee, and myself and Sam Vennard using the combination of dark shirts and white ties, and Matt Ballard adding a little bit of variaty with a dark waistcoat, yet still staying within the style. Mike even brought with him a pair of hair straighteners to work with my own and Jacob's hair, as well as hair gel and combs. In the end, we didn't use much of this, but it was still good to have in case we needed to play around with hair styles.
There is some other, more miscellaneous, gear which needs to be considered when heading up to the performance shoot. This gear is more simply practical, rather than for image reasons like the previous posts on equipment.
Tripod for video camera: This does go against certain conventions of filming a music video, however, there are certain shots that we have in mind that will only be possible by filming with the camera on a tripod.
Ladder:
The ladder is actually something that is stored on-set, and we'll use it when we get there. This, used in tandem with the tripod, will give us great high-angle shots, by setting up around the performers. We can use the tripod to rotate and change the angle easily on the camera, whilst already being up on the ladder gives us the height we need to pull off the shots.
Duct Tape:
This is more a general resource, and can be used for strapping items down to the ground - for example, perhaps the drums or keeping the camera steady, as well as being used for Mike's induced framing technique, where he uses thin strips of tape on the top and bottom of the video camera screen.
A large amount of forward planning is required to ensure that the performance shooting went as smoothly as possible. We had a lot to think about, and we ensured that we had all bases covered by the time we reached the unit to shoot.
The first step is to look at the instruments that the band themselves will be playing. The biggest aspect here is mainly colours, but also general shape - certain types of guitar, such as a BC Rich or a Gibson Flying V, would not suit our genre or theme of video (the above two guitars are associated heavily with the Metal genre of music). Also, we do know a friend of ours with a bright pink and white bass guitar, but it was swiftly decided that this would not fit at all, especially considering the desaturation that may well occur in the editing stage.
Below is the list of instruments we settled on:
Guitarist - Electric Guitar - Les Paul Standard - Tobacco Sunburst
Bassist - Fretted Electric Bass - Fender P Copy - Woodburst
Drummer - 9 piece drumkit - (All Silver) Bass, Snare, 2 high toms, floor tom, hi hat, ride and 2 crash symbols. - Black Bass Cap
The guitar and bass will be matched together nicely by their sunburst appearance, and the sunburst scheme will show up nicely. The drum-kit being silver helps us in two ways: firstly, it helps reflect light, which improves the image quality, and also fits with the greys, whites and blacks purveying in the video, mainly from the unit and surroundings themselves. We took careful consideration into the choice of instruments and equipment so that it matched carefully into the house style and didn't look out of place - for example, Matt Ballard has his own bass guitar, but it was a bright honey yellow colour, which wouldn't have fitted into the house style of the colours of the other instruments as well as the general colour scheme and feel of the video, so we plan on using Jacob Peeling's bass guitar instead, as it has a darker sunburst colouring. We tried to avoid bright colours, with the only bright colour on display being the red of Michael's guitar amplifier. Otherwise, the other instruments matched each other - most of the other amps were black and silver, with the drumkit being also silver, and the two guitars matching each other in dark sunburst colours.
At the 11th hour, we at last managed to confirm the band and who would be donating which equipment to the performance shoot. The confirmed band members will be:
Myself - Vocalist Jacob Peeling - Guitarist Matt Ballard - Bassist Sam Vennard - Drummer
The complete equipment and clothing list reads as this: Myself - Partial clothing (shirt, several ties), 3xMicrophones, Mic Stands and associated cables (donated by the WGSB Music Department), duct tape. Michael Burrin - Clothing from the waist up (shirts, ties etc), Les Paul Guitar and (red) Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amplifier. Matt Ballard - (black) Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amplifier+leads. Chris Mills - Drumkit, seat and sticks. Jacob Peeling - Fender Precision bass guitar, additional drum equipment (extra cymbals etc). Sam Vennard - JVC speaker/PA system.
