Air Traffic Controller NORDO Album
Here’s the latest Air Traffic Controller music video from their NORDO album titled “Ready or Not,” written by singer/songwriter Dave Munro. We shot the entire story with the Canon C300, both the narrative and the performance segments, using Kessler Cranes, Kessler Pocket Dolly, Kessler Stealth slider, Tilta rig, ikan D7w monitor and a Glidecam HD 4000 with the forearm support brace.
C300 handheld with Tilta rig. Photo by Sean Meehan
What I love about the Canon C300 EOS Cinema Camera is how it can be rigged up for handheld work, or stripped down compact and light for using handheld in tight spaces with the onboard hand grip and EVF. It’s also light enough stripped down for slider and Glidecam work. This was a personal project for me and the crew.
Canon C300 with 50mm f1.4 lens at sunset
Kessler Crane fun. Photo by Sean Meehan
Kessler slider shot
Explaining Tilta mattebox on C300 to Michael Murie. Photo by Sean Meehan
ikan D7w monitor and Torch BOLT LED. Photo by Sean Meehan
Glidecam in Harvard Square. Photo by Sean Meehan
This is how it all went down.
When I first heard Dave Munro perform a solo acoustic version of “Ready or Not” at Hugh O’Neill’s, our local open mic pub in Malden, MA, it touched me. It touched me because I knew it had personal meaning to Dave. And I knew right then and there I wanted to shoot a music video for that song. So when Dave’s band Air Traffic Controller put the finishing touches on their new album NORDO and I saw that “Ready or Not” was one of the tracks, I was ready! Dave gave me the green light and I started working on my concept for the story. I sent Dave a rough draft of my script and he dug my idea. I wanted the song to begin with a boy and a girl playing hide and seek in the woods.
Mickie counts it out
Addie peeks out from behind the tree
My vision was to have the boy searching for the girl throughout the song and then insert band performance shots during the chorus sections. Those band shots would be executed in a nice flat cornfield I scouted in western Massachusetts where there were no buildings, hills or trees so we could get a western sky behind the band at sunset. More on that later. After hashing out the script with Dave over a Guinness at a bar in Southie, we decided on creating two parallel stories for the song, one of the children playing hide and seek and their search during the game, and another story with two adults in the middle of a crumbling relationship where the woman bolts out the door, and the guy chases after her, creating a second search. There would also be flashbacks to happier times in their lives together.
A moment in time C300 screen grab
Happier times flashback on Weeks Footbridge in Cambridge, MA
I put out a casting call on Models Mayhem and got lucky. I found Eddie Nason for the part of the man and Andrea Lopez for the part of the woman. Since I wanted them to resemble the children in order to give the viewer the impression that the kids just might be a flashback, Andrea and Eddie were perfect for the roles.
Andrea and Eddie in the flashback dream scene
Addie on ikan D7w monitor taking direction. Photo by Sean Meehan
Addie POV of Mickie looking in closet
For the kids we cast Addison Earle as the girl and Mickie Munro as the boy. Addie is the daughter of my friend Kent Earle and Mickie is the son of ATC’s drummer, Rich Munro. The resemblance between Addie and Andrea was uncanny.
Addie hides behind cello
You’ll notice that throughout the video Addie is hiding in various locations behind a cello. The recurring visual of the cello represents the string arrangements you hear in the song and helps to create the dreamy story line over and over. I borrowed the cello from actress and model Heajee Leah Kim, who we used recently for a Canon C300 short film “Wonder No More” with fellow Boston filmmaker Paul Antico. I was hoping Heajee could have also been in this music video but her schedule did not permit her to participate.
Addie at Strawbeery Hill Farm with cello
Glidecam shot at Fort Hill Park. Photo by Sean Meehan
Mickie searching the mansion
I also wanted to use some cool locations, because well… cool locations help to create a look and feel for a film. Ultimately those spots would include Harold Parker State Forest in North Andover, MA, Fort Hill Park in Lowell, MA, a farm in Andover, MA and a beautiful old mansion on a hill located in Lowell, MA. The home was fantastic with a beautiful front and rear staircase and an attic with perfect morning sunlight shining through a gargoyle in the window that gave us spectacular rays of light once we added fog to the room.
Morning rays of light in the attic
Pigeon silhouette screen grab from POND5 stock footage
Some tricks were incorporated into the music video. There’s a natural break in the song where I wanted pigeons to suddenly fly in front of the lens when Addie first sneaks into the attic. Don Berube gave me the names of some local guys from Greater Boston Homing Pigeon Concourse. I contacted them but nobody wanted to release their pigeons indoors, especially in an attic where they could freak out and possibly get hurt. So when we did the scene, I shot a GS plate of the room with the fog machine going in case we could get someone later to release their birds outside in front of a green screen. But then Don’s brother Dan Berube, who runs the BOSCPUG events in Boston, sent me a link to POND5 HD stock footage. He found a fantastic clip of birds in flight in silhouette that I could effectively key over Addie’s silhouette just as she looks over her shoulder. I added a bit of wing flapping foley and it did the trick. The shot held just long enough to make it look realistic and the sudden moving imagery and sound fit into the the musical break very nicely.
Pigeons keyed over attic scene
Bedroom scene upside down. Photo by Sean Meehan
We did another trick with flip flopping images. Since the bed was jammed up against the wall at the headboard in the small spare bedroom where we shot the bedroon scene, instead of moving the bed away from the wall, we placed Andrea and Eddie’s heads at the foot of the bed and shot them upside down. Then we flipped the image in post. We used this same technique for some of the low angle shots of feet by flying the Glidecam upside down and flipping it in the edit.
Human car mount by “Any Means Necessary.” Photo by Sean Meehan
Moving shot of Eddie in car.
We did the shots from the hood of the car without using suction mounts. We had absolutely no budget for this video so I decided to try a hood shot like I had accomplished in my 3 minute short film challenge “Anniversary Day,” where I rode on the hood of a Jeep while holding on to some hooks and securely placing my feet on the large front bumper. Don’t worry. We were driving slow. But for this stunt we were using a sedan with no hooks or secure bumper. So Sean Meehan, who was shooting the BTS along with Adam Kerchman, suggested I try resting the camera in the recessed area where the wiper blades retract and walk along next to the car holding the camera in place. It actually fit into the recessed area quite nicely. I used my Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 with a polarizing filter to cut the glare off the windshield so we could see Eddie clearly inside the car. Again we were driving very slow but the reflection of the autumn colored leaves and tree limbs playing on the windshield made it look like Eddie was driving faster than he actually was. I wish we had a bean bag or the new Philip Bloom VBag to rest the C300 on. That would have been better than perfect!
ikan D7w in action. Photo by Adam Kerchman
Alison Shipton and Kiara Ana Perico
Sunset at Harold Parker State Forest
It was difficult to get all the band members together to shoot the performance parts. Everyone had schedule conflicts. So when the the string section was available, even though the band was not, we decided before it got any colder outside we’d shoot Alison Shipton and Kiara Ana Perico playing at Harold Parker State Forest with a breathtaking sunset in the trees behind them and worry about getting the rest of the band at a later time. When we wrapped the shoot, we saw that the sun was still hanging on the horizon, making some gorgeous color in the clouds. I threw the C300 back on the sticks and rolled on it until all the color was gone, figuring I could use the shot for a nice timelapse somewhere in the video. We left Harold Parker feeling good about the shoot.
Setting the studio lights
CU of Dave Munro and Casey Sullivan with projected studio backdrop and warm light
The final piece to this cinematography puzzle was to find a location in which to shoot the actual band segments. And now that we were into mid January in New England and the dead of winter, it made no sense to use a cornfield in the middle of nowhere now for those shots. It was too damn cold outside. So I asked Dave’s brother Jeff Munro, who runs the studio at Arlington Community Media, if we could shoot the band segments there. He made that happen. That’s when I remembered I had that long sunset clip I shot at Harold Parker. I decided I’d use a timelapse of that as a backdrop behind the band to give it a similar look and feel of the scene we had shot of the string section at Harold Parker. Jeff and I did a test at his studio using my old 4×3 SD projector mounted up in the lighting grid. That image was too small when projected on the wall to fit the entire band in front of it and the projector didn’t output enough brightness and contrast for the job, which gave the image a washed out look. So I checked online at B&H and found an awesome Vivitek D950 1080p HD projector with a 3,000:1 contrast ratio for short change. We lit the studio set with some CTO gels on nice rim and back light to give the band an orange glow that would emulate the sunset from the projected image behind them.
Jeff Munro mounts Vivitek projector. Photo by Sean Meehan
ATC in front of 1080p projected sunset timelapse
The video has two distinctive shooting styles. Most of the narrative scenes were either shot on a Miller Solo tripod, on the Kessler slider or the Kessler Crane, all donated for the entire length of the shoot by Mike Sutton and Paul Antico. The performance shots were all handheld except for one crane shot of Dave during a specific vocal moment where I thought it might look cool to move the camera up and away from him as he sang. I was going to bring along the Kessler Crane to the studio but Jeff said he had a crane there all set up. So we went with that crane. Turned out it needed a bit of work and we ended up using gaffer’s tape to make it work! But after multiple takes we got the shot!
Dave’s studio crane shot. Photo by Sean Meehan
Finally once in post production we decided to give the film a warm and slightly desaturated look for the color grade in keeping with the scenes we shot in the forest and in the studio. We used a combination of Magic Bullet Looks and a cool Instagram look plugin from Cineblur.
I won’t spoil the ending… but let’s just say it’s a bit unconventional and has lots to do with dreams, gargoyles and the magical possibilities that exist spiritually in life and death. Thanks to everyone involved in making this music video happen.
DIRECTOR/DP
Rick Macomber
LIGHTING
Kent Earle, Jeff Munro, Adam Kerchman
EDITOR
Rick Macomber
GLIDECAM/CRANE OPs
Rick Macomber, Jeff Munro
COLORISTS
Nora Raza’ai, Aaron Strader, Kevin Scanlon
LOCATION MANAGER
Kent Earle
STUDIO PROJECTION
Jeff Munro
BTS CINEMATOGRAPHY
Sean Meehan, Adam Kerchman
BTS STILLS
Sean Meehan, Jeff Munro
PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS
Mikayla Amoling, James Kent, Anthony Bisceglia, Bob Shepard Clapp
CAST
Boy – Mickie Munro
Girl – Addison Earle
Woman – Andrea Lopez
Man – Eddie Nason
THE BAND
Dave Munro – guitar, vocals
Steve Scott – guitar, vocals, keyboard
Casey Sullivan – bass guitar, vocals
Rich Munro – drums
Kiara Ana Perico – viola
Alison Shipton – violin
SPECIAL THANKS
Bridget Amoling, Mike Sutton, Kessler Crane, Paul Antico, Dan Berube, Katie Berube, Don Berube Michael Murie, Preston Kanak, Heajee Leah Kim, Peter Loosigian & Jason Pelletier – Strawberry Hill Farm, Andover, MA and Arlington Community Media, Inc.
Check this BTS video on the making of “Ready or Not” by Sean Meehan and Adam Kerchman
More from Air Traffic Controller: airtrafficcontrollermusic.com/
1 Comment
Well done Rick!!! Very good.