First Video Shoot: It’s A Wrap!
On Saturday, January 24th, I hooked up with my dude Jacob Izrael of 39 Lashes Media and set out to film the visuals for the first single from my upcoming RENAISSANCE MAN project entitled, “Why Bother”. Joining me on set was my business partner Tim; and, Danyelle and Eso both representing Denoted Poetry Ministries.
This was probably one of my most challenging video shoots yet – not because of the location or weather; but, because of me. The Friday before the shoot, I left work early because I was feeling sick to my stomach. I was worried that my stomach would be a problem during the shoot on Saturday . . . The good news is that it wasn’t. The bad news is that I woke up on Saturday morning with a splitting headache. I quickly took some Advil and did the best I could to let the headache dissipate before I headed to the set. My headache subsided and I was, again, feeling confident about the shoot; so, I packed my gear and headed out.
On my way to the location; rather, I should say, less than a few minutes away from the location, I got held up by a train at a railroad crossing. I am normally a fan of trains. Getting held up by a train at a crossing would not normally cause me stress; however, even though I was only a few minutes away from the set, this slow moving half-mile long train was about to make me late! What could I do? I sat there in my car, playing the track over and over again, and waited for the train to finally clear the crossing. After what seemed like an eternity, I was finally on my way again.
I got to the set with a minute to spare and we jumped right into it. Unfortunately what I did not notice was that my headache had creeped back – probably while I was stressing about waiting for the train. What should have been an easy first few takes turned out to be slightly painful and a whole lot embarrassing. One scene was to be shot on a quarter-pipe at a skate park. I jumped up on the top deck of the pipe to get a reference; but, on the way down, I lost traction and fell on my butt (no, there is no blooper footage of the fall – thank God). After the fall and with the intensity of my headache increasing, I found it difficult to concentrate on getting through my verses once the film started rolling.
Fast forward and I was able to get over my headache and the fall. We found a great location for one of the key scenes in the video and began to get to work. Jacob Izrael is meticulous when it comes to his craft, so we were getting some really good shots from multiple angles. Unfortunately, my body struck again. Without warning and for reasons I still don’t know, I got hit with a sharp pain in my abdomen in a middle of a take. I got through the take; but, it was apparent that something was wrong as Jacob noticed a changed in my expression and posture. As such, he wanted to run through it again (like I said, the man is a genius behind the camera). On the next take, I couldn’t even get half-way through when the pain struck again. Needless to say, we had to shut the shoot down while I attempted to get rid of the pain . . . I hate unnecessary down time.
Fortunately, it only took me around a half of an hour to get the pain to subside enough that we could continue with the shoot. We soldiered on; and, we managed to get all of the shots done. It took us nearly four full hours to get the shots to put together a two and a half minute video; and, in spite of the set backs, it was well worth it!
The video is in post-production now; and, I plan to release it very soon. Stay tuned for the world premier of “Why Bother” – coming soon!
~idp