Due to time constraints, I ultimately wasn’t able to do a music video for my final project (I’m still doing it, it just won’t be assessed). So, the kind of video I could do that would still involved my band would be a “Behind the Music” Style mockumentary, the band had initial concerns with being viewed as a “Skit band”, something that would effect whether or not we would be taken seriously. As part of their agreement to do it, I had to include some behind the scenes footage such as outtakes and deleted scenes to show that it’s all just acting for a laugh.
I got the initial idea from the “Pain for Pleasure” video that Sum 41 did. Obviously, pain for pleasure isn’t a real band, but they did it anyone for that one song they sometimes play.
Some ideas here only… not quite so ridiculous. More like a diet version of this.
One of the problems was, I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted the band to have themselves portrayed. Valen already had his alter ego lined up and he was eager to play it. The rest of the band, myself included hadn’t given much thought into our band personas, and because they were played by individual people, I didn’t want to tell them who to play or how to play it. I left the idea of their persona creation in their hands, but without knowing who was playing what, I couldn’t plan a script in advance, the best I could do was line up a few questions to ask them and film their improv’d responses, such as;
Who are Sordid Lies? What are your influences? Tell us about the other band members? Do you think you’ll go far? What hobbies do you enjoy when not on the road?
There were advantages to improv such as this, much like “Straight ahead” animation, the acting felt a lot more natural. People could act in whatever way they saw fit which some took better to than others, it also allowed for certain happy accidents to occur. For instance, in one scene where Valen is interviewing, Dani can be seen imitating him from behind, this was unplanned and accidental, but worked out. The idea of a glam metal guitarist that enjoys a spot of carp fishing is ludicrous, but funny, it was all his idea. He didn’t know he was going to say that, and neither did I.
Another problem was the idea of “Cream screening”. This is essentially Green Screening but with a cream background, an idea that ultimately failed because the cream colour is very close to our own skin colour. The idea was to implement a studio background on the more personal one to one interviews. However, when I tried to use the keylight in aftereffects, it would simply block out the entire scene… accept maybe some of our darker clothes.
And there it is in all it’s entirety, I used the cutaway shots to hide the more obvious edits, although you might be able to hear them, they’re not nearly as obvious. Not the easiest to upload as the video came to about 13 gigabytes in size, with over 100 gigabytes of footage that was needed for the initial editing process. But just in case you thought this was all serious…
We like to have fun.
It was filmed on a Sunday, so as a result, most of Sordid Lies were quite hung over for their parts, some might call that method acting.
Morning Star Animation 