Mountain Filming

Having learned a great deal from the colossal number of mistakes made in the first music video (like rendering the visuals blurry in an attempt to get my camera designed for documentaries to shoot like a Zack Snyder film), I've been chomping at the bit to get back at it and capture scenes with better focus, coherence and skill. To start, I began looking into what Steven Spielberg learned at film school, and started taking 'classes', if you will, from a variety of reputable online sources like RocketJump.

Great day for filming. Terrible sans sunscreen.

So, in taking my filmography education to new heights, I thought I'd do the same with my next music video for the song entitled Invictus. It was disappointing at first, finding the setting much warmer, brighter, and generally more pleasant than what what the screenplay calls for. A stroke of misfortune augmented by getting burnt to a crisp and nearly falling to my death multiple times, the last time only being avoided by a fortuitous tuft of grass I was able to grab onto mere moments before being hurled down a steep ridge.

Despite all these momentary setbacks and near-death experiences the plot for the story being written with these beats and scenes unexpectedly ended up requiring a brighter, happier set of angles in order to contrast with the real meat and substance of what I'm hoping to convey. And wouldn't you know it? Not two days after initial filming, a huge snow storm came and completely covered the same area that had just been filmed, appropriately blanketed with a towering sheet of gloomy clouds and darkened skies.

One of several happy moments where I nearly died.

Now the new, even more hazardous plan is to return to location as soon as possible to capture the refreshed scenery that so perfectly depicts a contrast to the first set of captures, and get some fun new scenes of hanging precariously without ropes from precipices with a damaged right shoulder and arms whose strength is generally not up to the task. It promises to be exciting adventure, to say the least, even if the film proves to be spotty at most.

Will he stand triumphant, or crumpled in a heap of his own gore?

In the mean time I've found myself working more on the three songs I'm locked into, and I've been hired by a Bowie-Tribute band! That wants to tour Germany! No seriously, get this- I had an old bandmix profile set up like, five years ago. It's a shoddy little site barely anyone has heard of and at the time my puerile brain thought it would be a monthly jackpot of gig-producers. Little did I know the site (which I can no longer access, btw, I have no idea what's still on my profile), was merely saving up the half decade of silence to enable me to work a bunch of goofy old men who've all been in the business for 30+ years and are intent on actually making some decent money in the process. I got a call from one of these gentlemen who had somehow stumbled on my archaic profile (I didn't know what he was talking about at first, it had been so long) and he asked me to join them in the above-mentioned adventures. Well, how could I refuse? So here I am now, a background vocalist, saxophone player and videographer for one of the most tight-sounding groups I've ever performed with. Never thought I would utter this unthinkable phrase, but- thank you bandmix. Thank you.

"Oh BAAABYLON, oh BAAABYLON we biiid thee farewellll....we're going to the mountains of Prooovo slash hellll"

Now we'll have to see what all these exact angles look like in a snowy wasteland where I can't hear potential predators coming and will fall several times more easily! Woohoo...