A couple of weeks ago I shot a new music video for Pega Loca, a Dutch acoustic band. They now have three band members playing acoustic guitar, acoustic bass and violin.
We did shoot a version of this track (bass and guitar only) a year ago but due to personal circumstances I was not able to edit this video. As a violin player recently joined the band they made new arrangements for their tracks with added violin parts. So, when Eric called me to shoot a new version for this song I was happy to work with them again.
The location
This time the band arranged for to the shoot to happen in a huge abandoned industrial plant where Philips used to produce electronic components like resistors and capacitors. It really was an awesome location for a music video.
Setting up
We met on location at 10:00 in the morning and set up all our gear in about 2 hours. As I did not visit the location before the shoot I had brought my usual lighting kit but this was not needed at all. There was plenty of natural light coming through large window panes in the ceiling.
I like to use the Kessler Crane Pocket Jib which enables me to move around quickly and to change camera angles on the fly. I used my trusty Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera as main camera. Although it’s 10 years old it still produces excellent images. In the picture below you can see my setup for this shoot.
I also used a slider to add some subtle motion to a couple of shots. You can see the slider in the picture on the floor in front of the jib.
Shooting the video
We started with shooting drone shots. The band had asked a friend to use his DJI drone for shooting some aerial footage of the performance. After that I shot the band several times, each time changing the camera location or focusing on another band member.
The band played along with an audio recording of the track. The track started with a four bar click track which i could use to sync the shots later.
As it was pretty bright inside the large hall I used a matte box with ND filter to be able to open up the lens so I could get the depth of field I wanted.
The shoot went very smooth. As we have worked before on several music videos we all know what to do and what to expect so it was a really enjoyable experience for everyone involved.
I also made a short time lapse of the shooting day: 5 hours in 1 minute.
Post production
After importing the footage into Davince Resolve I synced up the 14 tracks I was going to use. The two drone tracks had no sound so this took some time during the edit to make sure they synced up.
The multi-cam functionality in Davinci Resolve is really great for these kind of projects. Once the tracks are synced it is a breeze to work on the edit.
When I had a first edit I fine tuned it in a couple of hours together with Eric, the guitarist. He always sees little details that I overlook so this is an excellent quality check.
With the edit locked I finalized the colour grading and added the title and end credits.
The band and myself are very happy with the end result.