Feel Your Love
One of the benefits of being a freelancer is the wide variety of new people you meet and all the random opportunities that present themselves. I was contacted by a client of mine to shoot some ‘hometown videos’ for a new show that was being produced called “American Song Contest”. The show had 50 bands from each state compete against each other to decide who had the best song.
This project was completed in April of 2023.
I was contracted to film in both Indiana and Wisconsin. And met Jake’O in his hometown in Wisconsin. After the show he came back from LA and was interested in creating a music video for his song “Feel Your Love”.
Jake’O has a style he calls ‘nuevo/retro’ which is mixing the old with the new. He had an idea to create a world of amorphous blobs that were inspired by a dream state. After several discussions and taking into account a limited budget we ended up deciding on doing all effects in camera and creating the world in studio with a projector. We used the projector in many different ways including rear projection, side projection, reflection projection and loop projection.
For the first set-up we went with the classic rear projection onto a 12 ft. X 12 ft. silk which was used as a screen. We then placed the talent on the projector side to create a silhouette. With the screen being square I pushed my french doors on my matte box in to create a 4:3 frame and give it a ‘retro’ aesthetic. I switched between that and a 16:9 aspect ratio as a nod to the ‘nuevo’ aesthetic.
The commercial way of doing this would have been to use a green screen and then create the effect in post production. Because we did it all in camera I think it gave everything a more unique look.
For the next set-up we used an endless loop projection method. I wanted to create a sense of repetitiveness, like seeing into the past. For this effect I placed Jake’O in front of the screen with the projector still in the rear projector position. I then fed my camera directly into the projector. There was a slight delay in the feed so the delay in the image behind him created a cascading time effect.
One of my favorite setups was creating an interesting effect with reflection and projection. This gave our actress a different, more intimate way to interact with the artist. To create this effect I propped up a teleprompter glass on its side so it was covering the whole view of the camera. With the glass being on its side that enabled us to see a reflection of the screen which was 90 degrees camera right. Jake’O was placed in front of the camera behind the teleprompter glass. The idea was to not see Jake’O because the reflection of the projector screen was over powering what the camera was taking in. I then had Gigi (his wife) use her hands to interact with the reflection of the projector screen so we could see him and she could interact with his face. This was all something I had thought of in the days leading up to the shoot and I wasn’t sure if it was going to work out, but it did!
For our last use of the projector we filled the room up with haze and placed it behind him. Simple but super effective in creating some really cool visuals. I think the media going through the projector was key to creating this effect. There is something so simple but intriguing when using a projector to backlight your subject.
For the second day on location I relied heavily on an old Russian helios 55mm lens and fishing line to create some unique looking visuals. Lastly after Daniel Kinney edited everything together I emulated the look of a Kodek 2383 filmstock for the color grade. I ended up grading heavily into the different aspects of the saturation and finished it by throwing a 35mm grain on top to lean into the vintage look.
