Staring in the face of a bad economy and a decimated music industry, NYC indie band Audio Fiction has overcome long odds to produce a top quality video for their debut single. Bringing more pluck than buck to the process, the band leveraged 2.0 technology to mount a campaign that spanned 2 continents and included several location shoots. The finished video cost $400. Did you hear that, Mr. Cameron?
NYC indie band, Audio Fiction, originally set out to record a live performance of their song Way Out at one of their local shows. But they decided that a music video was probably a better option to help stand out. However, it was a daunting task. After careful research, they realized that the cheapest crappy music video could cost at least $15,000 or more. That was money they just didn’t have. As luck would have it, their Irish drummer, Mark O’Toole, had directed some short films back in college, so they put him to work with the limited resources they had, namely his home video camera.
Of course the big question still remained. How does one make a really good music video for like, well, close to nothing? What did it take? A whole lot of imagination and a few favors.
“One of the first tasks I had was finding an excellent editor who implicitly understood the music video medium. A great editor makes or breaks a music video regardless of what you shoot” added Mark. “I reached out to Kevin Cooney, an old film editor friend in Dublin, Ireland. Who agreed to come on board after I strong armed him and threatened his life” he joked.
The challenge was then deciding what he could and couldn’t shoot. Obviously, exotic locales and hi tech wizardry was not in the band’s miniscule budget. After deciding what scenes he wanted to shoot for the video, he and Kevin debated how they wanted the video to actually look and how they wanted to best project the band and the song.
The band plays some of the best and coolest venues in New York City so they had a lot of venues to choose from. “At its core, the band is a great live act, so I wanted to be able to incorporate the live performances while also highlighting our singer Kristin, her voice and the song itself” says O’Toole.
Using his Samsung HDV video camera, O’Toole acted as his own DP (director of photography) on all the shots with the obvious exception of the live performances where he plays drummer. He separately enlisted some friends to help shoot the live scenes under his direction.
The band performances within the video are actually made up of three separate gigs throughout New York City. The challenge was getting suitable shots culled from each of those gigs that worked best for the video.
All the scenes with the band’s lead vocalist, Kristin, were shot during the course of a single day and night. Shot guerrilla style, they had to ignore the numerous tourists stopping to take pictures while they were filming. They did their own lights and make-up to further save costs.
“With only two crew members, it’s hard not to be self conscious while filming in public, there’s no crew to boost your confidence and perform to or protect you in the cocoon of a shoot” recalls Kristin, the singer. Most video shoots have at last six to nine members on the crew which obviously adds to the overall costs. In order to create a number of different setups, they decided to shoot all around the same area. The director picked his apartment building’s basement, his street and Riverside Park at the end of the street, which made it easier to get to quickly and cost nothing.
The animation sequence was a stoke of luck. O’Toole’s neighbors own their own animation studio called Bunko Studios. They liked the song and agreed to generously contribute some of their animation to the video. Originally the animation was going to play a larger role in the video. “After an initial edit, we realized that it didn’t fit as well and took away from the focus on the singer and the song” says editor, Kevin Cooney. “We decided to leave it in at the beginning of the video as it worked best with the lyric of everyday life “people always talking, talking about nothing…” he added.
All the editing took place in Dublin. “At the time Mark’s father was ill, so he was in Dublin a lot, we were able to actually meet in person, which helped iron out a lot of how we wanted to the video to look like. When he wasn’t here, we would transfer files via the internet and old fashioned mail” explained Kevin, the video’s editor.
Incredibly, the final cost of making the video?
$400! See for yourself……
Credits:
Artist: Audio Fiction
Song: Way Out (from the album, Audio Fiction, available on iTunes, Cdbaby.com, Amazon etc)
Director: Mark O’Toole
Editor: Kevin Cooney
Additional camera: Pete Liska, Anosha Lewis, Dan Korb
Lights: Gunna Wilson
Animation: Naree Song, Frank Surez – Bunko Studios
Note: O’Toole has dedicated the video to the memory of his father who passed away while making the video.
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