Hey Guys,
I thought I would share where being in our business takes you occassionally. Back in the day I used to be in a metal band. We played alot of dives and broken down metal and punk clubs. One of which was the New Brookland Tavern in Cayce. Well, my gig with Time Warner brought me back to the NBT last night for a shoot. It was unreal. There were 4 hardcore punk bands on the bill, and each set got rougher and more violent than the last. You have to understand, these used to be my people. I'm 35 now, no tatoos, lives in the suburbs, you know; a sellout, a square. So, I got a mixture of amazement and vehemence from the kids that were at the show. I decided, like you do, to get in the front to get tight shots, and we had a camera in the back, another one on stage, and my soon to be patented "drum cam" which was my HV20. First of all, the promoter caled me and was concerned about "white light" that none of the bands were going to stand for white light on stage because colored light is much more punk and white light is sellout bs. So, I'm like alrighty whatever... anyway, we ended up coaxing as much light as we could out of broken down cans that they had, and it ended up being ok. In the front, I was the target of the pit. So, I'm at the front of the stage, and behind me is spin kicking, violent rage while the band is all over the place... jumping into the crowd, hanging from the ceiling, etc. So, I go through three 25 minute sets of this. At one point some kid writes CORPORATE s**t on a piece of paper and shoves it in front of the camera. I tried to grab him before he ran off to tell him that it was too dark for me to see it, but he lost his chance to say something on TV
Anyway, the headliner is apparently a fairly well known band called "Black Tusk" and the singer comes to me before their set and tells me that their thing is that they keep it dark on stage, and have these green and blue lights they trigger from a pedal. So, I'm going well, if it's dark, there's no picture, so anyway. That one will be interesting to see how it turns out, because I got alot of green tinted sillhouettes and such, but It's hard to say what it looked like. It was, nonetheless, a very cool experience, and I have a sense that the footage will be pretty kick arse. I feel like I have been beaten with rods in my back, and my eyes are burning still from the smoke, but it was good to get back to my roots, and see that kids are still angry and rebellious. Nothing changes for them, which is very cool. I'm not editing this one (thank god) but I will keep you guys posted if anyone's interested. This felt like being embedded in the war, so I can't imagine a much more challenging peacetime shoot. BTW i used 2 A1s with the new PFVision preset, an HV20, and a VX2100. We shot all SD
4:3 so it can go on the crappy TV we have here. Thanks for listening...
Grant Photo & Video
Website
http://www.grantphotovideo.com Blog
http://www.grantphotovideo.blogspot.com
