Ostensibly, the shoot started at noon, but of course nothing in rock n' roll, (or movie-making, for that matter) ever starts on time. But not wanting to miss out, my friend and I got there five minutes early, already wearing the requisite black t-shirts. There were women on the street corners with yellow ribbons on the end of sticks directing traffic. (My friend said: "Sweet. There's going to be a short-form gymnastics program.") Such was not the case.
Being that my buddy and I are working on a DIY documentary film about a local band, (trite, I know) we were shocked to find out that this video had the full compliment of gear--a truck full of it lighting, dollies, gels and the like. After peeking into the truck we wandered over to the registration table and signed the release form. "You're signing away your soul," said the woman behind the table. I froze, and she continued, "...to the Birthday Suits." For some reason, that made me feel comfortable enough to stop reading the waiver and just sign it.
From there, I got a stamp on my inner-arm; a double eighth note. How fitting. It was only later that I would find out that the prettier people were also stamped with roses, which indicated that they were to be placed up front. I felt slightly dejected, but I reminded myself that I am beautiful on the inside.
Now the waiting begins. People started trickling in, bringing food and wearing sunglasses to make life a little more bearable after a night of shows on Saturday. After about 50 people showed up and everything was ready on the set, they called us in.
The Griggs-Midway building has some offices, storage space, a couple of businesses, but it's mostly empty warehouse. They set up a stage around one of the big cement pillars holding up the 20 foot ceiling. Around the stage was a track where they set up the dolly rig with the camera.
They called forth all rose-stamped pretty people and started applying make-up. Ha, I knew my lack of hottie status would pay off. After the foundation was applied, they sent around a couple other people to apply baby oil to everyone's arms and faces, which makes a pretty convincing-looking sweat. Thankfully I got doused with the baby oil, because when they ran out, they had this guy with Prince's haircut applying olive oil. Were those people to be slow-roasted later?
Finally, we got the pep-talk. "You are huge, you are bigger than you think you are. You are an entire stadium. You love this band. When the music starts, rock out like you've never rocked-out before. We know this is Minnesota, please don't act like a Minnesota audience." This came easily for me, because I love the band, but it was made even easier because they wanted everyone to remove their spectacles to reduce glare from the intense lights. The music started, and the band played along with it, and it was remarkably fun to really jump up and down and throw my arms in the air--just like I didn't care. And as soon as we all started, there was a cut. Apparently that had been a rehearsal. A few more rehearsal takes, and the crew was ready. They'd shoot for about 30 seconds, everyone would jump and shout, and then recover. This went on for about an hour and then we were given a break.
Did I mention there was free beer? There was free beer, but to get an honest day's work out of us, they wouldn't tap the kegs until we were about halfway through. So on our break, everyone was eyeing the kegs, giving knowing glances to one another that, if we cooperated, we could take the entire production staff... no problem. But Minnesota nice got the better of us, and we took them up on free Red Bull and Capri-Sun.
Back at the shoot, we had more and more of the 30 second spaz-attack rocking out, which was slowly becoming a bit tiresome. More oilings were coming, and by ducking and weaving I successfully avoided the oil formerly known as baby. Plus I was sweating on my own at that point anyhow. At one point, another friend of mine commented, "Now I know why people in rock videos look so vacuous--they're tired of doing the same thing over and over and over again." Word to that. Bear in mind, the song the video is for, "Twin Cities Bridge Is Falling Down" is all of two minutes and 22 seconds. We were starting on our third hour of shooting when they finally opened the first keg. (An aside; if you have two kegs of one kind of beer, and only one of a slightly inferior beer, but at a similar cost, which would you open first? Right. You open The Premium, not the Leinies. Thanks for confirming.) We got one 12 oz. cup and were told we could "take five." I finished my beer quickly, and went back for more. "Sorry, only one cup," was the reply.
"Really?"
"Well, I suppose you could have another half-cup."
"Gee, thanks."
Each time we'd go back in, we were asked to rotate--if you were in the front, move to the back, move to a different part around the stage, etc. Which was nice, because you could see everyone else's interpretation of "rocking like you've never rocked before" was like. You got the devil horns, the crazy jumping, a guy from the band Falcon Crest christened a new one called "Climbing the Beanstalk" which I'll let your imagination fill in the details for you.
To be completely honest, I was surprised how little attritrion there was after the next break, when there was pretty much free reign on the beer. But as tired and overly rocked-out as people were, there was continuous high energy throughout the remainder of the shoot. They called a wrap at 6, after which the band was going to actually play a set of music. Mercifully, it didn't include "Twin Cities Bridge Is Falling Down." They were probably just as tired of playing it as we were of hearing it for the previous five and a half hours.
Was it worth it? Sure. Certainly not for the possibility of being in a music video, though. I mean, who knows where it will show up? Plus, it was a fantastic way to spend a Sunday afternoon with two of my favorite interests--music and filmmaking. I'd say that the folks shooting it knew what they were doing. They were a very courteous and knowledgable group of folks, and they were definitely working hard. I can't wait to see the finished product, and find out just how real my sweat looked.
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Comments: 4
Will the video be available online so we can try to spot you in the finished product?
I would imagine it will take some time to get a finished product, though. Like I said, there was a lot of footage shot. I think i neglected to mention that it was done on actual film, not digital...