Blue October Music Video shot with Canon 7D

[Abel]

Blue October is definitely one of my favorite bands around and a few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be invited to be an extra for the filming of a new music video. The video shoot was for The Chills which is their first single off of their new upcoming studio album titled Any Man In America set to be released August 16th. GO PREORDER IT NOW. =)

The majority of this music video was shot with a Canon 7D & Nikon MF prime lenses except for the high speed/slo mo camera work which was filmed at about 1,000 frames a second on another camera rig. Being the photographer that I am it was very informative for me to just sit and observe how things were done in between takes and I took plenty of mental notes on setups, techniques and tricks since I've been wanting to get more active in the video side of things as of late.

Isn't it hard to believe how far we've come in say the last 10 years of photography where now a camera such as the Canon 7D can be purchased at a consumer store such as Best Buy is being used in a large scale movies, tv shows and/or music video recordings. Wow. That makes me feel very inadequate in the sense that I have a Canon 5d MKII and I don't do ANY video with it. Ha! =(

Anyways, being on set for the two days was a very cool experience because I got to see all of the behind the scenes of the entire production for this video shoot. As an extra I was part of two days of the several day long shoot. The first day they filmed the "Pinata Scene" and the "After Party Scene" and then the second day we spent all evening in small, hot, stuffy, small bar/venue in San Marcos, Texas by the name of Triple Crown in order to shoot the "Concert Scene".

Triple Crown normally holds their weekly Open Mic Night on Sunday evenings but the production company rented it out for the night so that we can shoot there. I'm sure the venue was very happy in renting it out as well as having about 200 very "thirsty" patrons (myself included!) in house on a Sunday night! =)


Here's the video.. ps. my brief moment of fame around 2:10 mark (bottom right hand corner ha!). don't blink or you'll miss it. ha!

‪Blue October - The Chills‬‏ - YouTube

‪Blue October - The Chills‬‏ - YouTube

Here is Blue October's Tour Manager and close friend Alski being used as a stand in for the Director of Photography's stage lighting test. The crew used a huge constant hot light mounted from the ceiling joists which put out a ton of light... and HEAT! I don't recall the make but is was a radial/circular layout of about eight 8" long hot lights total. This thing could mimic the SUN!

Here are all of us hot, sweaty, stinky extras. lol. In the script I read that the director was going for a hot, sweaty, edgey feel for the "Concert Scene" and by all means I think he got it! I don't think I've ever sweated as much as I did during this 3hr photo shoot.

They played The Chills single over the speakers in the venue and the band sang along and played unplugged in instruments with the music etc. They must have played the full song some 30 times that night since there was only one camera being used so in order to cover various angles and such there needed to be several takes.

I had the "Wuh Oh oh... oh oh oh" line stuck in my head FOR DAYS!!!

Here's the high speed rig and high power HMI Lighting.. As you may or may not know, shutter speed controls ambient light so when they fired this bad boy up for the 1,000 frames per second recording the lights got cranked WAY up too in order to produce enough lighting in order to capture the film.

Anyways, there's a little insight from my perspective in regards to the music video shoot. It was a blast hanging out with friends and partying for 2 days of this music video shoot! I would do it all over again in a heartbeat! Not only was it fun but it was VERY imfomative to me as a photographer and I feel that I learned a lot from just watching the production crew and camera men. Kudos to them for doing a great job!

[blue-october-fan]

awesome!! B-)

[bryanlindsey]

[Abel]

Yes that is me! I'm also in the "Pinata Scene" as well... =)

lol. It's like playing Where's Waldo huh!?

[KenJulio]

Originally Posted by bryanlindsey

Abel - you dont look so 'passive'....a bit rowdy in my opinion...

[Abel]

Originally Posted by KenJulio

Abel - you dont look so 'passive'....a bit rowdy in my opinion...

uh. hello. I was IN CHARACTER!!! yea thats it.

[contributor_M]

Originally Posted by bryanlindsey

LMAO.

You beat me too it!

[PhotoByLeal]

AWESOME, congrats!

Hey they need to come down for the TPF Christmas Party!
Plenty of shrimp & liquor for everybody! heheeee

later......

[iCe]

Man that's awesome. Has MTV called you about guest hosting yet?

I have been researching <<--- big word that really means reading a little, playing around a little with DSLR video lately. The 5DMKII and 7D as well as the 1DMKIV are pretty popular video cameras because... get this... they most closely emulate film There are a couple of good books (and a lot of crap) that cover the hows and why's of shooting DSLR video. The best that I've read so far (only because it's all that I've read) is HDSLR Cinema: Crafting the Film Look with Video. It's a dang good read. It's amazing to me how in only a couple of years there have been all kinds of goodies to add to a DSLR to make it easier to use as a video camera.

I'm not going to clog up your post with video from the guy but go to Vimeo and search for Vincent Laforet (vimeo.com/laforet) then go to his very first DSLR video (Reverie). He shot it with a 5DMKII BEFORE it was released to the public. Nocturne is also pretty cool.