Thursday, June 11, 2009

Cast Iron Gates

This was the second music video I did for Francis Friday, this time with my good friend Jarred Alterman of Fly Away Films. We've worked together several times over the years, but he had never done a video for any of my Francis Friday ventures. The pieces fell into place and in April of '08 we got together one evening, just before sundown. Jarred had a great camera with a lens that's in focus in the middle, while the edges are blurry, which is a great effect! Miguel Drake-McLaughlin handled most of the camera work, while Jarred directed. It was entirely Jarred's concept....use old 8mm footage (from my family's archives) interspersed with the hazy, in-out-of-focus material, to give a dreamlike, whistful image.

We shot some footage by the cemetery near Greenpoint, which had some old iron gates (more wrought than cast though) and did the rest in his house. Besides the lens, the other effect he used was to project images onto my face while I sang along to the song. After the shoot, Jarred bunkered down in his editing room to cut it together with the 8mm footage. I don't know how it happend so fast, but in a couple days it was done and on the web.


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