I LOVE THE DVX

Should I be ashamed? I feel like a real dork now. Man...what a looser. I think I'm head over heels. Goodness. I realy am a goober. A goober. Damn. 

Leftside View 

Rightside View 

Covering Bands is fun

I'll post some stuff from time to time on bands that I like to cover. I really enjoy the process of shooting shows. Now, I get crazy with it. I mean I am in the lead singer's face with the camera. But usually I cover my friend's bands so they know how I can be when the camera comes out.

Here are some stills from a show I covered that Rudy Banes Shut Down did back in January. It was a house show. I put a 1K outside the window with some CTO on it and a 300W clipped on a book shelf behind the band. The walls were white so the 1K bounce back in to fill (a little). I shot this stuff at a 250 shutter speed I think so it has a really neurotic feel to it. I also used the manual zoom a lot to make even more crazy. Keep in mind these stills are captures from a DVD so there are encoding artifacts present - the original Mini-DV footage off the DVX looks better of course. Take a look.

Here's part of the artwork for their latest albulm. You can buy it from them via credit card at their website. I have a link to it over on the right...over there...look...look to your right...do you see it? Press it...see what happens...it's crazy...it goes to there website...technology. 

Adam...drum control.... 

There's Pak....keepin' it real... 

There's Pak...pluckin' along... 

Dave...gettin' his point across... 

The DVD

Here's a menu I did for a DVD of footage I shot at a show in January (Auburn Show) 

Rudy Banes Shut Down Show Coming Up! July 3rd at Sakura

Check out their website. Link to the right...

SQUAREFEST

Here's some more footage I captures with the Canon GL1. This is the drummer from Fry Cook out of mobile. This was a show put on in Auburn at The Coffee House. My good friend Ryan who is the Bryan responsible for "The Squares" put on this super dooper event called "Squarefest" where, I don't know, like 10 (maybe more) bands played all day. They were from all over Alabama. Some of the bands included were The Immortal Lee County Killers, The Good and Rudy Banes. It's been a while. Ryan...what other bands were there at that show? Comment?  

 

 

 

 

I shot this in frame mode and kicked the shutter speed up pretty high. Shooting into the sunned windows. I like to push the limits on DV equipment. Clipping is good sometimes. Film can't do that. DV can though and maybe....just maybe...that's a good thing. 

Fry Cook was a lot of fun 

What's "The Squares"?

Here are a few examples of The Squares comic strips. One of several that Ryan puts together. I got these from The Harbinger's web page. It is a paper they were published in back in 2000 (Mobile, AL) 

 

 

DOWNRIGHT

Here's Steve Lewis at 4th and 23rd in T-Town. This was shot with my good friend Michael Toohey's Canon GL1 using frame mode. I did not set up lights. In fact this was an impromptu shoot. I just played off the stage lights. Backlight is great. Those shades sure are "taking care of business" too. 

Steve Lewis' mouth from Downright show. 

New Year's Eve Show at The Arena (2002?)

Here's the drummer for Downright on New Years Eve 2002 I think. They covered the entire Beastie Boys Check Your Head albulm that night. And they did it right. You could have popped the albulm in and hit play when they started the set (non-stop set) and they would have been pretty close to synched up to it as it plays-sampling, interludes and all. Awesome "Mystery Set" as they called it. 

NIHIL

So this is the first longer form (more than 10 minutes) project I did while in college at the University of Alabama during the Fall/Spring '95/'96 . This was not a class project this was just for experience. This was shot on VHS. This was also one of the first times I used a light kit. It was a lowell similar to what I have now except with no gels. Not that I knew how to use them then anyway. I cut this with 2 VHS editing VCR over the course of a few months.

Rarely was a tripod used to shoot this thing. Pak Nichols shot a lot of the chase scene. He doesn't remember doing it, but he did. That involved shooting from a racing Mazda Protege while either I or Co-Director Matt Terry was driving.

At one point during production the police intervened to insure that we weren't really chasing each other all over campus with guns.

There was not a formatted script just an outline of scenes on a piece of paper which you can see coming out of my back pocket during certain moments of the elongated chase scene.

This guy hacked money from the Fat Man... 

This character is played by Steve Lewis. Front man for the popular musical sensation DOWNRIGHT here in Birmingham. 

The fat man is ticked and hires an indebted assasin to kill the kid. The Fat Man is played by Pak Nichols who is actually the star of several of the early sketches I did for a sketch comedy show that aired via cable access in Buffalo NY. Pak is now playing base with Rudy Banes Shut Down and painting like a mad man down in Monkey Town.