Nero
Brock Scott is an artist and musician who I met through a mutual friend at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He’s fronted several bands over the years, including the Brock Scott Quartet, Dreamer Boy Dan, and now his latest, Little Tybee.
Progressive rock played on real instruments – violins, piano, acoustic guitar – by real musicians. Intelligent lyrics filled with stories and historical allusions. You’ll be humming it at work.
I’ve used a few of Brock’s tracks before, most recently a Little Tybee track called “Spellcheck His Eulogy” for a my stillmotion piece Inline.
For Little Tybee’s upcoming album “Humorous to Bees”, Brock and I got together to create a music video for “Nero”, a ditty on the tyrannical Roman Emperor who famously “fiddled while Rome burned”
(Suetonius actually says he played the lyre)
We came up with the idea of having another SCAD graduate, Mark Montgomery throwing yo-yo as the centerpiece of the video, focused on his craft while all around him the spectacle explodes.
Terrence Green (left) with Mark Montgomery
We did this as a single, in-camera take, which required two things: a skilled Steadicam operator and great talent. Chris Campbell, a veteran of feature films and music videos, was psyched on the project, and manned the Steadicam. You can get in touch with Chris at chriscrooked@gmail.com
Clockwise from upper left: Brock Scott, me, assistant Sharif Hassan, Chris Campbell and Mark Montgomery
Between myself, Chris and Brock, we pulled in a great group of talent including bboy and hiphop dancers, Falcons cheerleaders, singers, musicians, pinup girls, and photographers. Each “scene” was pulled from a past shoot or funny shoot experience, and it was all shot on a single evening in my studio here at Encyclomedia.
Rehearsing, Mark Campbell on right
We used a Panasonic HPX170 P2 video camera, which allows you to shoot progressive material at variable frame rates. So we could overcrank to 36 fps, with the music playing at 150%, then slow the final footage down to 24fps and sync it with the original track. The 170 also portable enough to easily work with on a Steadicam, or in tight spaces, running around the woods, or lashed to the side of a cliff, so its been my main camera for most of the video work I’ve been doing lately.
Chris Campbell, left and I go over the game plan with the crew
It turned out everyone had either worked together before or knew each other. One dancer was Mark’s neighbor, and there was something about a noise complaint. Hatchet buried. That’s the great thing about the performance community in Atlanta. Tons of talent, very little drama or attitude.
Some of Atlantas finest talent going over the steps
Nearing the end of a take
It was more like a live performance than a video shoot. We pulled it off after only 18 takes (and with only one open bloody wound). Chalk it up to the awesome talent we had in the room
Here is the official Nero video. The album will be out in early Fall 2010, complete with Brock’s hand-drawn album artwork.
Nero – Music Video from Andrew Kornylak on Vimeo.
If you have more questions about the video, steadicam or monitoring gear or just want to see the latest awesome camera toys, stop by Showcase Camera. Whenever I have video or audio equipment problem to solve I talk to Frank or Kenny in the video department.
Comments
Very interesting read. Always cool to see behind the scenes of something that moves you.
[…] Here is an older post with some behind the scenes info of how we did it: http://theblindmonkey.com/2010/06/nero_behind_the_scenes/ […]