James Black: Blackheart Bells – Behind the Scenes

Note: Wall of text ahead – if you just want to watch the video, click here! :)

I’ve had a really busy last week, and a really busy weekend. And why?

Last Sunday I got a message on Youtube from a Youtube-musician called James Black. He’d found my Youtube channel and liked what he saw. He wanted me to do a video for his song “Blackheart Bells”. The time frame was 7-10 days.

I thought it would be an awesome challenge. 7 days to get everything in place. Story, storyboard, participants, locations, everything. And to fit it into my daily schedule as well (I work 9.00-17.00 every day).

So Sunday evening was spent on getting the story in place.

Monday evening I went to meet up with Kat, a girl I know (who just happen to be studying acting), and was hoping that she wanted to participate. And luckily she said yes! :)

Tuesday night I used on finishing the story board, which gave me a good overview of what to shoot – and no, I’m not going to upload a screenshot of it, since I can’t draw at all :p

I started shooting the first video pieces in my own apartment on Wednesday, which is the backbone of the video – the story about my character which we follow. I managed to get everything shot, except two scenes. Because the two scenes required some footage with Kat, which I didn’t have at this point.

Thursday and Friday I didn’t have time to do anything on the video, because I had already other stuff planned.

Saturday afternoon i went out to a beautiful cemetery, located on Nørrebro in Copenhagen. It’s a really beautiful place, and it has a lot of areas which doesn’t really look like a cemetery, until you turn around the corner and sees all the tombstones. So this spot was perfect since I didn’t really want to give the ending away, until the very end.
So the scene where I walk with the flowers, is actually recorded on a cemetery.
For all the cemetery shots I had Lennart with me, a good friend, and his sole purpose was to stand in front of the camera, so I could set focus (and of course to slay any zombies/ghouls/ghosts who might attack us for disturbing their grave peace!).
After we parted I went to park to scout out the location for the Sunday shootings, and I found a nice location, so I was now ready for Sunday!

Sunday afternoon (a bit tired, with a tiny hangover from a concert Saturday night) I went to the park with Kat, and luckily the weather was perfect for the scenes. But a lot of other people thought the park would be a nice place to be on such a sunny Sunday afternoon – so the place I had found, was a bit too crowded. So we searched the park for other areas to shoot, and we found a little green area, right next to the water, which just suited perfectly.
I had certain pictures in mind that I wanted, and we did get those shot first, and then started to just fool around and be creative, trying different stuff out. And as it turns out, the pictures I originally had in mind, never really got used in the video, because all the improvised scenes were so much better.
When I felt we were done there, we went back to the original location I had found, and made the last scene (where Kat get the flowers).

Sunday evening, when I got home I quickly edited the sequences I needed to record of my television, where we get introduced to Kat the first time, so I could film those. I got the rough edit done that night, and went to bed a bit too late, but hey, it was worth it :P

Monday afternoon I got the picture of Kat and me printed at work, so I could do the picture frame shot. The original idea was to film the frame hit the wall, and then film the frame hitting the floor. But this turned out to be a bad idea.

1) The frame hitting the wall was just a blurry object coming into view, hit the wall, and disappear as fast as it emerged.
2) The glass broke on the second try to film the frame hitting the wall.

So my only option was to film the broken frame, with me in the background, walking out the house, which actually made it more clear that I went outside to go to the cemetery. But in the shot where I throw the frame, it lands on the left side of the door – so if you look closely, it looks a bit odd that it jumps (as Gavin, one of the guys giving feedback, so nicely pointed out, even though I did my best to cover it up :P ).

I edited the last bits together, and sent it to a special few in my network to give feedback.

Tuesday night I edited a few things, which was pointed out through the feedback – I couldn’t correct everything, sadly, but I think the final video is decent. I can proudly say that this is the first video I’ve done which I feel is close to 100 % as I imagined it. Very close! There’s still room for improvements, but I guess a creative person never gets 100 % satisfied.

Anyway, what’s all the fuss about? Here’s the video, please rate and/or comment on it – would be nice:

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