Hey guys!
I have some very exciting news. A music video I shot with my good pal Mikel for the alternative/pop-punk band The October Accord made it on cable television tonight!! Here's the story behind the ordeal.
So during my first semester of freshman year at Clark University, I was contacted by a girl that was in my peer-advising group (pretty much our freshman orientation group). As we were learning about everyone in the group, I mentioned that I do video work when it was my turn. The girl mentions that she's in a band called The October Accord. I thought that was pretty cool (and also the fact that her name is Holly). During the semester, Holly got ahold of me to direct and shoot a music video for her and her band. I was indecisive about doing the video at first because I've only shot one music video prior, which was the Nobs 4 Lyf video, and figured I didn't have the experience they were looking for. Another factor was figuring out if I had enough time in my schedule to shoot the music video, edit it, and also have time for keep up with the course loads of my classes and such. I eventually agreed and set a date to shoot on December 21, 2013.
The night before the date of the shoot, I slept like total shit. This always happens. Plans are made, ideas are set, but I always find myself often laying wide awake thinking about shots and how they'll sequence together. I guess it's good walking in with what you want to shoot to make things move more swiftly during a shoot. At this point in my life I hated coffee, so I was running on pure adrenaline throughout the day.
We were up bright and early to get everything shot in one day. We ran into some miscommunication with the singer of the band at first but managed to all meet at our first location to shoot.
Appreciate the badassery that is us entering the first shoot location.
For the warehouse location of the shoot, Mike and I first focused on capturing the entire band in a few long-shots encompassing the entire band. We ran into re-shoots due to the terrible acoustics of the warehouse, but it's the mise-en-scène that made it work! Then we started shooting medium to close-up shots of each member of the band.
One of the main shots we used in the video being shot!
You can check out the behind the scenes of the video below. It's pretty much what I just said above, but a thousand times more enjoyable guaranteed!
The editing process got tedious at points. It was coming down to exporting an edit, and then realizing something was slightly off, then changing that edit, and finally exporting, which takes time and so forth. I didn't mind the tediousness of the project because I had just finished my fall semester at Clark and was on break; at least I was busy with some video work, am I right? I sent the video a few times to Holly to get her feedback along with the rest of the band's feedback. A lot of the feedback was swapping out some shots with others and fixing syncing issues. Regardless, the process had a quick turn around with editing the video and the behind the scenes in around a week. The video then premiered on New Year's day of 2014.
I never expected the video to spread as much as it did, to be completely honest! The October Accord has a small following (for now), but their fan-base of a little over 1,000 likes at the time were incredibly consistent and active. With the help of sharing the music video on my behalf and mostly from the bandmates and their fans over Facebook and Twitter, the video spread around and accumulated a few thousand views in less than a month. The video is nearing 3,000 at the time of this post being written. The October Accord and the video have gained local spotlight, first being mentioned in an article in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and more recently, being shown tonight on Charter TV3's show "WooTube." The video is currently in competition for "Video of the Month" alongside four videos from other local artists. If the video wins "Video of the Month," it will be entered in competition for WooTube's "Video of the Year."
I'm so thankful to have been apart of the ride with The October Accord. They are the best, seriously. They are so awesome and were so friendly and easy to work with. It makes things so much easier when you are working with people who give and return their respect and patience to you. Plus, the band really knows where they are heading and have such a crisp "Paramore-esque" quality to them. Usually shoots can get hectic and tension can come between people on set when time is scarce, but when we ran into little mini dilemmas shooting, we all got through it and worked together on a product we are all satisfied with. I am looking forward to working with these guys in the future and I hope it happens real soon. There's word that they are in the process of working on their latest EP, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for that! I think we are all excited to get to work with each other once that time comes. When that time comes however, we will produce sometime 10x better!
Look at all that swag we possess.
Also, I forgot to include the music video that started this awesome journey. If you have gotten to the end of this post, thank you for taking the time to get this far and hearing me out! It is always appreciated!
-Mitch
