Beating Time- Lawson Whitford- Leaves in the River- Story Song Project
Time catches up with everyone. That’s what we had to beat- time.
A 5-minute song. Two full time crew members. Two Night shoots. Simulated rain. Less than 12 hours with actors. Postproduction special effects. Hard enough yet?
Well camera issues, actual rain on our day shoot, no LED’s the 2nd night leaving us with only a quartz light, and scheduling issues surprised both me and Travis.
Travis learned to hold his phone, umbrella and be cam op all at the same time. I learned how to direct actors while shooting water at them. Life skills indeed.
The positives: the end product was interesting. Close enough to the vision if you ask me. Cartoons were used, the acting was good, there were cool shots, the rain was very wet, the story was very vague, and there was an actual project completed. There weren’t 10 bad shots, or 10 missing shots. It was somehow, more or less, done. The amount of work that went into this is crazy, considering it was all visual with no words.
Travis was a great partner who shared as director. He was really easy to work with and pitch ideas to. Usually he responded how to do an idea rather than critique it to death, which was a nice change of pace.
I am not entirely clear on the reception, but I don’t think anyone loved it, and I will have to live with that. The story’s confusing nature was mentioned at the viewing, which was something I wanted. The lyrics of the song do not shed light on every hidden detail and just like every detail in the song is not overexplained, neither are the visuals even with the audio. I was trying to create something sad yet happy, vague yet triumphant, huge yet intimate. Perhaps I failed but no one can ever accuse me of not giving my all. And everyone else was giving their all too.
Someway, we got it turned it in on time, and I think there are great elements in it, like the acting, certain shots, certain special effects, the concrete hand, the practical rain, the gimble shot, and I do still like some of the confusing details. I will likely make another edit based on the feedback I received about the last minute being too fast.
We did beat time though. Thank you so much to Travis, Clara and Alex for doing their workload and more.
#storysong #bts
