Have you taken a moment (or an afternoon) to check out Matthew Brown's work on Vimeo? You won't be disappointed. Matt is one of our dear friends and he, along with his partner Ian, have joined us on a handful of adventures over the years. We've reposted a few of Matt's videos too - most notably Gay=Sin, Tides, and Right Before World War III. Watch just one of these creations and you'll see how amazingly talented he is at capturing vividly beautiful imagery and crafting it into a unique style of highly emotional story-telling. He has a gift and a very bright future/career ahead of him.
Matt and Ian asked us to help with a new video project several months back. All we knew at that point was that it was a music video for an up-and-coming Pop artist named: BeBop. We couldn't say no to the opportunity, nor did we realize what they had in store for us. :) Only days before we began shooting Matt mentions there would be lots of feathers, full-body paint, and nudity. And we're filming this in mid-October with temperatures in the 40's. BRRR!!!
Now Dusty and I are no strangers to being naked in front of the camera, but we don't consider ourselves nudists. Only amongst our close friends in comfortable, remote locations do we ever get naked just for the hell of it. We've certainly never considered spending two full days on an actual movie set (with a dozen cast and crew members) running around the woods and rolling in big piles of leaves naked. But why not? There's a first time for everything!
We set our alarms for 4:30am Saturday morning to get picked up by Ian and driven to the filming location in Duvall, WA. It was very cold and the forested farm land was thick with fog. We pulled into the location before sunrise and were immediately impressed by the large log cabin, barns, garden and all the surrounding woodland. This place was incredible!
In the early morning, dew collects on all the spider webs. The forest was full of huge, intricate webs. Definitely gave the Set a spooky feel.
This is Nick, one of two dedicated videographers working on the project. They primarily used 7Ds to shoot the film, the same camera I'm currently using. But the number of lenses they had put my measly 3 to shame.
Here's Janna and Garet, listening to Matt's directions, trying not to look freezing cold. :)
Dusty had a big part in the movie. He spent the better part of both shooting days in his undies or less. In this scene he has to lick paint from his tongue onto Waha (the older man's) nose. Luckily they got the shot in just one take, but still Dusty had to crouch over him for about 20 minutes. I'm sure this scene will look really awesome.
Since we didn't have very much budget for the project, the special effects were simple, but we sure had a lot of fun bringing Matt's vision to life. This vision by the way, involves taking a leaf blower to a huge pile of feathers, naked painted bodies, and a forest that can move in response to other creatures. How can you beat that? :)
And finally here's a group shot of the entire cast and crew, except for Jennifer who had to leave a little early. Fun group to work with and we quickly developed a strong sense of teamwork. We got a lot of scenes shot in a small window of time - I hope it's enough for Matt to turn this experience into another visually captivating piece of art.
