Filming A Music Video

CenterSeat Entertainment, which is the company I run with my business partner Safaa Sammander, is currently in production with an original Chris DeMarco music video based on his song "I'm Calling You." Now I may not be a fan of the genre of music that he plays but that doesn't stop me from taking money from a potential client. Point of fact is that since this is really Safaa's "baby" as producer I have very little to do in terms of producing on this production as my talents are currently split between the Cesar Aguirre short film, the Ondie Daniel/Keith Kelly short film "A Gift," and the just completed Movie Night Event #2 screening of the Southlan-Films production BAD LAND (which I also co-produced and assisted directed on), so my plat has been pretty full as late.

On this production I've stepped back mainly to play as techical co-director & producer helping out where ever Safaa needs, so, truth to the point I have yet to actually sit down and listen to the song or read the script or just about anything else that isn't "technical" that Safaa needs from me. Since this is a paying client (unlike all the other projects thus far mentioned) this one takes precident over everything else because it has the greatest potential to be able to go somewhere else whether it leads to more projects with DeMarco or be it other music videos. It will be a calling card for our company that will aid in the advertsiement of our company in the same way that the Movie Night Events are advertising The SWIFF festival in October.

I also play an important role on the production as the lighting designer/director of photography and second camerman (as I've let Vernon Mui be the first cameraman). We had our first production shoot two Sundays ago which for the most part went well regardless of the slight chaos of trying to film a lot of footage in such a short amount of time. We were limited to the amount of daylight hours we had to film in the morning and we were limited to the hours of the bar TROIS in which we were filming.

Safaa had some clear ideas about what she wanted to see in the video but due to some of the constraints of the location we were very limited and I couldn't set up some of the shots like I would have liked simply because of our time limitations to the location. This has forced Safaa into a difficult situation - 1)whether to use the footage filmed and make the best of it or 2)reshoot the end of the film in the manner in which it was suppose to be filmed in order to get the mood and tone of the production desired.

So far Safaa and I have discussed all the possibilities and she is adament about reshooting some of the sequences, so that seems to be the next step in this production. I won't agree with her 100% on everything she is trying to do but the ending of the film (in the bar) I do believe needs to be refilmed. She believes it should be at night but the scene can easily be rewritten and refilmed to make it a "Day" scene so we don't run into the conflicts with finding a space to film in at night.

Regardless of what Safaa ultimately chooses I will support her decission and try to accomodate her as best I can to the best of my abilities. Right now I'm trying to get Theatre in the Square to allow us to use their facility at night since we cannot get TROIS to allow us to film there.

I hope everything goes well in that I can do some creative things in the lobby of the theatre to bring out the "colour" of the space. Meanwhile we have the stage and apartment sequence to film this Thursday so wish us smooth sailing from here on out.