Making of “The Truth I’m Standing On“ Music Video
The entire process of making this video: from writing a treatment at breakneck speed, pre-production, pulling off over nine setups in a day, and delivering a final piece was a whirlwind of experience that taught me so much moving forward in my career.
While I don’t know how often I can realistically take the time to give thought out, elaborate posts that detail every lesson I received, I do hope that I can share occasional pieces of advice I’ve learned that can help others out.
Pre Pre-Production
One minute you’re feeling stagnant in your creativity, wondering what’s next in your career, and the next thing you know you’re hit in the face with a chance to turn in a treatment for a music video: the only catch is it’s due tomorrow. That’s life. Things come up at the last minute all the time. It’s about your ability to tackle those opportunities and have ideas at the ready.
I always start by playing the song - nonstop. If you can’t enjoy listening to what you’re making a video for then there’s really no point in getting involved. The entire night I wrote down any ideas, vignettes, and moments that came to mind. I’d see which ones I actually appreciated after sitting with them for a while. If you’re sick of an idea by the time you’ve written it down then obviously it’s not worth pursuing. I tried to find interviews with the artist speaking about the song as well because I wanted to be aware of her own vision and reasons behind the lyrics.
Eventually I came up with an idea I felt confident I could pull of within the given budget and was proud of putting my name on. After that I spent the remaining night looking up as many reference visuals I could find to include in the treatment to give the best possible representation of what I wanted the final piece to be.
The video would take place in a large, cold, depressing interior environment for the first half, and then on a transitional moment within the song we’d move to a warm, vibrant exterior. The switch would take place without the audience realizing until the camera would pull out from the piano the viewer still thinks is indoors but is now outside. The theme was the overcoming of personal anxieties/depression that the artist had detailed when talking about why she’d written the song in the first place. Finding a way to channel our anxieties and depression into a force that helps free us from those feelings. INT/EXT = DEPRESSION/HAPPINESS, etc. You get it.
I try to keep my treatments brief. I explain what I felt from the song, and what I believe the artist’s message is. I give a brief idea of what performance setups we’ll have and what narrative elements. I try to keep that all to one page if possible. Sometimes I go into more detail than that but not often - only when I have an idea that I think needs more details. I then include one or two pages of reference images that help convey the tone/look we’ll be aiming for.
I pitched the video and immediately told myself to forget about it. Don’t check my email. Move on. If you’re going to get anywhere within the business of directing music videos, or video projects in general, you have to have thick skin and be prepared to hear no many more times than you ever hear a single yes. You can’t spend every minute of every day hoping to hear back or you’ll be setting yourself up for heartbreak over and over again.
Thankfully this time around I eventually heard back and it was a yes.
Here are a few of the images I included on my treatment to help give an example of the tone/atmosphere I was wanting to accomplish:
PRE-PRODUCTION
Congratulations, you just booked a music video! Prepare for unimaginable stress, hurdles, adrenaline spikes, incredible highs and lows. It’s better than most drugs and far more addictive.
As I spoke to the label representatives I quickly realized I’d need a producer on board. I knew my strengths were heavily right-brained and talking about the left-brained details (insurance, rentals, releases, etc) almost made me have a panic attack. Finding someone that would field the details while I worked on the idea itself and executing it was essential. So I reached out to a producer that a fellow director friend had introduced me to a while back and we decided to tackle the project together. He was essential to this happening - so thanks Jay Hawley.
For this particular video I had pulled a lot of references and studied the location’s online images as much as I could to get a sense of the space going into this. We (myself and Jay) spent a lot of time working out the details in advance to get a location that offered everything I was hoping to accomplish based on my treatment. We would need a piano that we could move from the inside to the outside, and we needed a location that had a great interior (with multiple usable spaces) as well as a very large field nearby.
We did not have the time or budget to make this a two day shoot, nor a two-location shoot. We would not have a day to scout this location due to it being booked up. At most we’d have maybe thirty minutes to see it in-person on the day-of. So going into this day prepared would prove instrumental if we were going to pull off a good video.
We found a piano on Facebook marketplace (a great resource for looking for last-minute needs and free props) and I’ll never forget how hard it was to load that piano into a truck bed with only the two of us and a very disgruntled husband and wife who were eager to see it go. We almost gave up a few times before we finally got it into the bed. It cost nothing but the blood, sweat, and tears that it took to transport it and looked great.
The location came off of a site devoted to renting spaces for productions in our area: Avvay. If you yourself can’t haggle (like me), then make sure you find a producer who can handle that side of things because it’s incredibly important to pulling off big ideas within small budgets.
Due to not being able to scout the location physically, I made plans to quickly walk the location in the morning and note where the sunset would be using an app for tracking the sun’s path. I went over the images provided on the website to have a rough idea of what locations I’d want to shoot in and what could be avoided. I planned on shooting that exterior performance backlight by the sunset. Never leave that sort of thing to chance.
Our video was at the very, very beginning of Covid regulations so we were acutely aware of keeping a minimal footprint, and a light crew. In the end it was myself as Director/DP, a Producer who essentially was the AD too (he also become our on-set Covid regulations appointee as well), a Movi/Cam Op, and a Gaffer. Ultimately I’d say the day was hardest on the gaffer who was constantly having to shift m18’s around outside the house to whatever window we needed inside. No one really had it easy though.
Especially anytime we all had to move that piano.
Seriously do not overestimate how much they weigh when you put one in a field for your treatment.
PRODUCTION
The big day was right around the corner, so I spent the time leading up to it pouring over reference visuals. I wound up having a five page reference guide that had around fifty images that I used to help keep my own mind rooted in the tone I envisioned. Sometimes on the day of a shoot it’s easy to forget things that earlier felt unforgettable - so having a guide I could reference to bring my mind back to my idea was very beneficial.
Just a few examples from various pages in my references:
The day before the shoot I spent a while working out a detailed shotlist. I wanted to make sure I could cross off every single shot once I knew we had it, instead of relying on myself to know when we’d truly gotten everything I would need for an edit. When I don’t have a list or something to check off, I can often times tunnel vision and just do the same shot over and over again. A crucial moment was mentally preparing myself for how best to pull off the bait-and-switch of the piano being inside for one shot, and then outside for the next one.
Initially I’d planned on having curtains rigged up in the field as well to help sell the switch but on the day-of we decided that wasn’t necessary. I made sure to frame up the push-in on the piano keyboard, and then took multiple images of the final frame on my phone so that we matched it on the exterior for our pull-out later in the day.
An example of what my shotlist looked like for a couple of the setups. I made sure I knew on the day-of what I could walk away without getting, in case we ran short on time:
One of the best parts of the day was having someone so accessible and open for direction and played well to the camera. Leanna had an energy that you could see on screen, and a willing vulnerability that helped to sell the opening moments. When we finally got to the moments of celebration in the song and the exteriors I think we were all at a point where we truly felt like celebrating being outside and able to shake off the energy we’d been holding onto for the earlier moments.
It’s important to not focus entirely on images as a director. Focus on your artist and the emotion first. With Leanna it was easy. I wanted her to feel comfortable, to be herself, and to not be afraid to give herself over to the idea of the video. For some of the shoot Jay helped to set the mood by playing some sad ambient music (that I can’t for the life of me remember now. Novo Amor? IDK). Pay attention to where they’re facing, their eyes, and everything about their expressions. Oftentimes it’s not enough to say “look sadder” (also that’s just a weird ambiguous thing to say in general) but instead give them specific directions.
In the end the day ran the full twelve hours we’d planned on it going. Our movi fell apart right during sunset. A few people went home with chigger. While we had to scrap certain shots due to time, we managed to pull off every setup I’d had in mind. We’d survived. We all walked away exhausted, but also incredibly proud.
I mean, I dunno - I was at least.
BTS:
THE FINISHED VIDEO
Another time I may dig into details about how I edited this, and the collaborative process that goes into editing a video and receiving notes from a label/artist. For now the post has already gone long so I’ll just leave you with the final video. I’ll post lighting charts soon in separate posts. Thanks for reading.
Click here to go to the first lighting breakdown for this music video.