So this one's been sitting on a hard drive since July. Elena Goddard and I did another music video this summer and it finally released last week as the track made its way to the different music streaming platforms.
WRITTEN & PERFORMED BY: Elena Goddard
DIRECTOR/DP/EDIT: me
CAMERA ASSISTANT: Kyle Vines
She'd wanted the imagery for this music video to have her in a wide open space to lean on the song's idea of her feeling alone and isolated. Turns out find a wide open space is easier said than done here in New York unless you're down to shoot at the beach – thanks Coney Island.
My planning, prep, and pile of reference images were all well and good, but I swear there was nothing easy or forgiving about this project short of Elena's grace and understanding about everything. Again, she's self-funding all this nonsense and had just under $400 for this shoot. We used my camera package and lenses and the budget needed to cover an incredibly discounted AC rate as well renting an EasyRig, 1/2 ProMist filter, and two Gold Mount batteries. For the sake of them ever seeing the light of day, here's a bit from my original notes, references, and scouting images (R.I.P.).
There was a bit of a hot mess regarding a gear rental falling through and then me scrambling to secure what I was needing. Crazy thanks to New York Camera Company for absolutely hustling and coming through in a pinch; looking forward to working with them more down the road.
We were working with Elena's work schedule and at the time she was only available Thursday afternoons. The weather forecast here seems to change wildly by the minute and we'd gone days with our weather apps saying we'd be fine and have clear skies during our shoot, but we got the short end of the stick on this one. Still, we'd committed our time and resources and weren't up to waste them.
Once we got out to Coney Island we ended up having a 90 minute window before the rain was too much. That time frame got us a few takes and a rush of b-roll I prayed was enough. We also shot a few minutes with her in the ocean that I dug but ended up not fitting with the edit.
Post-wise, this was the first in a bit where I tried digging into DaVinci Resolve. I'll normally do any kind of color correction and grading just inside Premiere Pro but wanted to try something else. By all means I've become a fan of Resolve even in my short time in the software, but there's a considerable learning curve in getting even close to knowing what you're doing.
At the end of it all, I'm glad we got what we did and I was able to try some new things. Crazy thanks to Elena Goddard for reaching out about doing another one as well as to Kyle Vines for making a rough shoot day run as smooth as possible. We shot another music video this past week that's a bit of an opposite to this project so I'll post more on that one down the road.