My first music video
 

Hi everyone,

I have to say this site is inspiring and intimidating =)

I just came to a point where I'm calling a video I shot finished and was hoping for some feedback... I'll give you a little background on it as well.

http://www.jeremyhughes77.com/_qt/download.html

The video cost me $150 was shot in 6 hours and I had over 1/2 my cast back out the day before (even though I had them lined up for over a month) - so on the fly I had to try to tweak the concept and then solve it in editing. The butterfly idea came from all these caterpillars hanging 30 feet out of trees where they were cocooning themselves.

The singer is a friend of mine, Matt Beckler who's very talented.

Look forward to your comments and thanks!

Great Job!

Question - did you storyboard the video or just make your editing decisions in post?

Thanks Mike, it WAS storyboarded originally but everything changed with the dropouts from the cast - I lost my "unique" characters I had planned :-). You can take a look at the original boarded ideas put to the song here - its an avi file at the top of the page:
http://www.mattbeckler.com/download.html

You can see a couple areas that were able to stay close to the boards and I feel like they show up the strongest in the video... though I'll let everyone else tell me if thats true or not - heh

those storyboards are amazing!

Mine are just stick figures, which actually don't look like anything


still downloading the video.. taking REALLY long for me for some reason

Okay, first, do you draw your own storyboards? If so, I'm jealous, cuz I'm a stick-figure guy too.

Second, I thought most of the shots you used were beautiful. I'm really curious about the butterflies. Some of those shots were real I'm sure, but some looked like you FX'd them. Did you? If you did, I'm not knocking it, it was well done. If they were all real, then . . . well, that's interesting too.

My only gripe with the video is that I felt like I couldn't figure out where it was going. I couldn't figure out what the story was. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I just didn't get it. Music videos can be like that. They're like poetry.

Anywho, nicely done.

Thanks Travis,

Yes, I drew the storyboards - I originally was working as a storyboard artist and concept designer... had a chance to head out west but I'm still in Ohio :)
Theres a little bit more to look at in my illustration section www.jeremyhughes77.com

All the butterflies are digital as is the rain and a number of lens flares. I used Maya for the butterflies and I know the spot where they fly over the water is a bad one - they're poorly lit and a couple look like theyre on rails. (one of these days I'll redo it!) I also wasnt too happy with the sign as I made a mistake and gave him a white piece of flimsy board so it wobbles and blends in with his shirt the whole time - it was impossible to track to.

As for the story - I agree with you. I originally had a much different concept in contrasting the southern politeness and outward false appearances people put up while in the rain scenes they'd all be real - as in family fighting, blind guy cheating himself at chess, a dog lady with her wo poodles attacking her, etc. and Matt and the red shoed girl bring it all together at the end where everyone gets real and redeemed in what was supposed to be a big 20 person dance.

Buuuut.... I lost a ton of people, esp key characters the day before and others had to leave early throughout the day of shooting. We shot for 6 hours and I ended up with 1:30 of footage to work from. So I started to build a story around contrasting Matt with the chainsmoker - Matt lets go and is redeemed at the end while the chainsmoker who also gets what he was wanting isnt happy with it and walks off. I was also attempting to play off of the little angel and the pirate as Matt and the red shoed girl. There was quite a bit I wish I had to solidify the concept a bit more but that was the best I could do with the footage. Learned a LOT though, especially that next time, keep the cast down in size - especially if its free! :)

Wow. Very nice illustrative and design work. I know, grass is always greener . . . but . . . jeez, I wish I could draw like that.

Again, great camera-work on the shoot. It's tough working on a low budget with lots of people. For the challenges you faced, you did excellent work.

I didnt really follow the story either but that was still awsome.