Died Inside

I barely knew Dan when he asked me, in December of 2009, to drive out to Milwaukee with him and shoot a music video for a band that he knew. Dan was one of the quiet guys in the class; Dan and Mark, both pretty much background characters in the first two semesters, were often confused for one another by teachers and other students alike. However, i had made the determination early on that during my time at MMI, i was going to dip my fingers into every video project that i possibly could. I agreed without hesitation. Plus, there was the offer of free food, and "free" and "food" are two of those keywords that everyone knows they can use to manipulate me. That's not a complaint.

We became acquainted on the drive out. During those ninety minutes, i heard Dan talk more than i had in the previous ninety days. I'd later learn that this is a hallmark of Dan while he's smoking. I was really glad to get to know the guy, though; our class was small (nine people left by this point), and i wanted to know them all. Dan and i became good friends after this, and would go on to work together whenever possible. See: Ed Wood Part II.

Problems struck almost immediately when we arrived at the shooting location, a VFW in one of Milwaukee's suburbs, i forget which...might've even been Waukesha. We had nonworking lights in both of the lighting kits that we'd brought along (as our tenure at Madison Media Institute went on, we'd learn that this is normal), and we'd forgotten the spare camera batteries. We had no choice but to continue as best as we could.

The lighting situation turned out ok; our shots are much darker than they perhaps would have been, but with the way the final product turned out, it's probably better this way. The camera batteries that we had miraculously held out. Given our further experiences with those cameras and batteries, to this day i can't figure out how we pulled that one off.

Setup took longer than expected (experience would later teach us that this, too, was normal), but there were further issues. The band's guitarist wouldn't be showing up for hours yet, limiting the shots that we could do. The food didn't show up until much later than expected either, and by that time we really just wanted to be done and go home rather than take an extended break to eat.

Man, this blog is turning out much more negative than i expected, and not nearly as funny. I suppose most of my blogs don't turn out as funny as i always hope they will. Paradigm Pudding is one big downer, isn't it?

Throughout the shoot, the band remained cold and impassive toward us. Dan and i ended up sitting together across the room from the band for dinner. I was bored and uncomfortable.

After we'd listened to their song, Died Inside, played over and over about 30 times while we shot different members of the band from different angles, we suddenly realized that not one but both of our cameras had the volume on the microphones turned off. What does this mean? It means that there's about 60 clips of the band playing with no audio. Granted, the audio recorded on location isn't going to be the audio used in the final product, that would be awful, but without the audio on the source footage, these clips are going to be next to impossible to synchronize for editing.

Dan told me on the drive home that there was actually already significant outside interest in this video, before it had even been shot. Oprah, of all people, wanted it for her show. Why? Because the song, and consequently the video, are about child abuse and raising awareness thereof. Also, one of the networks in Europe, possibly even MTV Europe, i don't remember, had it slotted for airtime. This was kind of a big deal. I'd had no idea going in, but i was glad. It would be good exposure for me, early in my career.

So what happened?

Dan spent probably 100 or more hours over the next few weeks synchronizing that footage based on lips and hand positions on instruments. I didn't help with this process, but i know from experience how much of a pain in the ass synchronizing this way is, although i've never done it with more than five clips or so, and my clips were much better lit.

Dan continued to put in long hours on the project well after the footage was synchronized. There was the actual editing, color correction, special effects, and so on, and then the live video was together. But wait! There was still storyline footage to be shot and edited into the live stuff!

The first shoot was really my major involvement in the video, but as Dan progressed on the storyline footage and further editing, i acted as a creative consultant, providing valuable advice on what he should and shouldn't do (some of which he actually took) and helping out with some of the post production. Somehow he roped Dick into helping with some of it too, before the Ed Wood fiasco.

I was terribly, terribly sick of hearing that song over and over a couple months in. I'd come in to school late at night to use a video suite to work on my own projects (principally Kiwiland, Ho!: Second Edition), and i'd hear that song resonating from one of the other rooms where Dan was diligently fixing the tiniest details, usually things nobody but a director would even notice. I had to admire his dedication. This is one of the chief reasons that i pointed straight at him when we were nominating a director for Weinelstein.

But then, when he thought it was finished, and i thought it looked beautiful, and everyone else he showed it to agreed that it was far beyond the scope of what any student of his stature should have been capable of, the band started to demand changes.

They started out as minor changes, and continued as minor changes for a while, but the problem was that they were coming in constantly. Every time he thought he'd sated the band, they'd demand something else trivial and stupid.

Meanwhile, after every revision, Dan kept dutifully taking time out of his own busy work and school schedule to export and reformat the video four or six different ways, optimized for different forms of presentation such as web or DVD. And, since the video was supposed to go overseas, that meant doing each version in both NTSC (America's format) and PAL (the entire rest of the world's format). I could see Dan getting more and more irritated with each passing day as more and more was demanded of him; more and more work that he wasn't getting paid for. I told him after the second or third revision that he should just tell Bellevue Suite to blast it out their fucking asses, and he agreed with me, but somehow he couldn't let it go. No, this video had to be perfect and it had to be used for its intended purpose, or else everything was for naught. I can respect that decision, but it still sucks.

Then the biggest problem came about: Barry, the drummer, had either quit the band or been fired, i don't recall which but either way, the band wanted all of Barry's shots removed from the video and replaced with their new drummer.

This is where i absolutely would have drawn the line and told them to just take what they're given and be happy with it, and Dan almost did exactly that, except that the band then said fine, give us the original project files and we'll make the changes ourselves.

Dan had the misfortune of seeing the footage that the band themselves had shot of their new drummer and saw exactly what they were about to do to his masterpiece. He caved. He took their footage and integrated it into the video himself, lest they destroy his art. He explained how shitty the new footage was and all the work he had to go through to bring it even close to the standard set by our original HD video; it wasn't pretty.

I've actually never seen their final version. But the version with Barry looks great, it could easily play on MTV alongside million-dollar industry videos.

But it never did.

Not because of anything Dan did, either. And not because the band was lying about the outside interest, either; that turned out to all be legitimate. No, the entire project was fucked over by the band itself, no surprise. That astonishing mass of DVDs that Dan had burned over and over and over again? Not one of them got shipped out.

I don't know why the discs were never shipped, but when the producer from Europe started calling looking for them, the band's representative told him to "just download it off of YouTube."

What?! What the fuck!? No, you don't just download shit off of YouTube and throw it into rotation on MTV, unless it's a fucking joke, like Tosh.0 or something. How the hell did this guy think he was going to be taken seriously?

I don't know what exactly happened with Oprah, but i'd assume something similar, or else it just took too long to get the finished product into her hands. We'd started in December of last year, i don't think the video was finished to Bellevue's satisfaction until May or June.

Dan's still proud of his work. I'm still proud of my contributions. I think we both came away from it with a very impressive portfolio piece, and we can still truthfully say that that video was "produced for MTV Europe," even though it never aired.

Dan was lamenting to me, though, shortly after the whole thing was over. "If i could go back and do it again, there's a few things i'd definitely do differently..."

I replied: "Like not making a $100,000 music video for free?"

Died Inside