PART 1: VARIATIONS OF LIFE WITHOUT SKIN
When the first Lumierians album hit, I was eager to volunteer myself for music video detail. I've been friends with the Lumerians for a number of years, and thought it would be cool to cross-pollinate our chosen mediums. In fact, I even had a pre-existing concept in mind: A man would be driving around a decrepit city, with his head rapidly mutating into a collage of different monsters while the interior of his car produces a multi-colored lightshow. With their propulsive beats and flair for the psychedelic I figured this could easily work with any number of Lumerian songs.
However, at the time 'Transmalinnia' was coming out, I was knee deep in post production on Help Wanted, so it wasn't until March 2012, when Jason told me there was a new album in the works, that I was able to get on the bandwagon. I pitched my concept, which he thought would go over well, and then assigned me a song that he sent along the next night.
But the song he sent me, Life Without Skin, turned out to be a step in a different direction for the band. The frantic layers I associated with the Lumerians had been stripped back to reveal an evil groove being played in slow motion. After three minutes, this shifted into a 2 minute freak out -boogie, and then collapsed into a choral driven climax, all at the leisurely pace of six minutes and seven seconds.
My first instinct was to ask if they had a different song I could do instead - I wasn't sure this would work as a music video. On the other hand, I also found that it was catchy. Then the thought hit me: what if I turn this down, and someone else does an amazing video with this? What if this turns out to be some lost opportunity that I'll lament in my autumn years? So I was in, and began trying to figure out how to make a video out of it.
The biggest hurdle was going to be the budget. The label only had $500 to throw at this project, but given the length and scope of the song, I knew we would need more. Being in a situation were I was dying to shoot something, ANYTHING, and fast, I opted to add an extra $400 to the budget out of pocket, reasoning that anything I shot would probably be out of pocket anyway, and at least this would have a built in audience.
My car concept would get stale after about three minutes, so that was out. However, I still felt the video needed movement, an urban environment, and monsters. So, what I eventually hit on is what I'll call 'Version 1'.
VERSION 1: THE SUBWAY
A scruffy looking man wakes up on a subway train. The other passengers are all asleep, but as the train lights flick on and off, they turn into frightening, wide mouthed Ghouls. The man flees to a different train car, only to encounter even more ghouls. As he travels through from car to car, the ghouls become more agitated, all while strange, psychedelic images are seen through the car windows. Eventually, the train turns into a large black void, and he is stranded. Which is where the video would end.
So, with a highly ambitious concept and $900 dollars to play with, I set about calling on favors. My friend Noah Nelson, my A.D on 'Help Wanted', agreed to play the lead (I thought his great, exaggerated eyes would look amazing on camera), and a circle of friends, Rocio Vee, John Petersen and Adrienne Burke (soon to be Adrienne Petersen) where drafted in to play Ghouls. Finally, I hit up my friend Brad Jones to help me produce, as he had offered to do so months earlier. With a crew in place, I started trying to work out how we were going to get our hands on a subway train to film.
SUBWAY DESIGN
Shooting on a real subway car was out of the question, because we would need the windows to have a green screen behind them. The only option seemed to be building a subway set instead. Unrealistic you say? Maybe. Here was my plan:
The idea was that we only needed to build one wall, open roofed, about 23 feet long. LA Subway cars don't have much in the way of design - they really just look like plastic boxes, so I figured with a bit of glossy paint and good lighting this could work. It would have been built out of masonite, and cardboard, inexpensive materials that would keep costs down to a whopping $250 dollars.
The chairs would have been done with cardboard as well, based off a template I got on(where else) the internet..
THE MONSTERS
The masks where also a problem. I had derived inspiration from the mummy's appearing in Werner Herzog's 'Nosferatu', and the forces of darkness in Terry Gilliams 'Brazil', the result being shrouded, open mouthed creatures that looked like representations of death without looking like anything specific.
Of course, monsters require make up artists. I knew a really talented guy here in LA, who was going to build two silicone "hero" masks for close shots, while I would build lesser detailed masks for background ghouls. Problematically, the cost of materials and his fee, though discounted, proved to be out of our reach, so I opted to just build all the masks myself, using the cheapest material I could get my hands on: rolls of Bed Foam purchased at Target.
Here's how it works:
First, get your hands on some common bed foam, and cut out a rectangular strip about 2 1/2 to 3 ft (depending on how big or small your head is).
With a pair of scissors, you want to thin out one side of it, so that the foam is only a few centimeters thick.
Then wrap it around your head. Use duct tape to hold in place in the back. Using your fingers, feel out where your eyes, nose, and mouth are, then make little markings with a felt tip pen.
Remove the bed foam from your head, get out a pair of scissors, and then cut out holes in the marked spots.
With that done, use balls of cotton and liquid latex to build up the features you wish your mask to have, and voila! A cheap monster mask.
Over the course of two months I produced four masks which I thought looked remarkably good, as long as we never showed them from the back, too close from the front, or from the side (insert dry humor here).
DELAY 1
With a small budget, an ambitious idea, and monster masks made out of bed foam, the video always seemed on the verge of collapse. The final nail in the coffin came about three weeks before the initial June shoot. Brad thought it wise if we sought the advice of his friend Nick, who runs All Sets out near Echo Park. Not only did Nick make a living with set construction, but Brad thought he might even be willing to build our subway in exchange for free storyboard work. However, Nick deemed this as too costly and time consuming. Undeterred, I then met up with the two of them to go over my initial designs, convinced that they could work with some imagination and effective lighting. Perhaps we could even do a stylized, 'Forbidden Zone' style set? Nick surprised me by agreeing "This could actually work." However, he also pointed out "if you build this and for some reason it just doesn't look right, you'll have no extra cash for a backup plan." Brad also pointed out that if we failed, it wasn't just my project going down but the band's music video as well.
"Why not just have the guy being chased around downtown LA by these things?" he said.
VERSION 2: THE 'IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS' VERSION
Noah (formally 'Scruffy Man') would wake up on a subway, this time deserted with all but 1 lone Ghoul. Frightened, he gets off at the first stop, and finds himself in a run down neighborhood infested with Ghouls. As he runs, the neighborhood would begin shifting, transplanting him to increasingly enclosed, run down spaces that he cannot escape from. He would eventually end up in 'The Void', like in version 1.
What I liked most about this scenario was the idea of scenery constantly shifting on the character. In this way, I could keep things trippy without being obvious, and also keep the visuals and the idea from becoming repetitive. As well, the subway shots were now written out in a way that could be achieved with an old fashioned guerrilla shoot on one of LA's subways (yes - LA has a subway). We decided to push the shoot back by two weeks in order to re-organize.
Noah pointed me in the direction of the Historic Warehouse District south of Downtown. With it's gothic, rundown rat warren layout, this would make a perfect setting for the video. Additionally, Amy and I did extensive location scouts, both during the day and at night, and concluded the area to be pretty safe.
Nick agreed to loan out a Canon7D for the shoot, and his studio space for the Void scene, pro bono. My first shoot in LA was looking up to be a real class act!
I got in touch with Sami Martin, my costume designer for "Help Wanted", who found some terrific pieces of long grey material to be used for the Ghoul costumes. The last piece of the puzzle was to find a decent DP...
WHO'S GONNA SHOOT THIS THING?
One of the big hurdles in finding a good DP was going to be the rate. Even with our shoot's costs now greatly reduced, we still couldn't afford to pay more than $200 to whomever got the job. The only way we could really sell this rate was that we were offering $100 a day for a two day shoot, although I felt very strongly that we needed three.
We got very close to a talented friend that had shot Brad's film DADA, who I was ecstatic to work with, but was having a hard time committing due to scheduling conflicts.
Another lead went as far as coffee, a hand shaken agreement, and a flurry of unanswered e-mails.
The person I kept going back to was my friend Jaime, one of my co-workers at Specialty's Cafe And Bakery (the day job). He had a very impressive reel, tons of enthusiasm, and was a horror movie nut. My kind of guy, and after some debate, I decided he was my man. But 1 day later, Brad and I finally heard back from a DP we'd been after for weeks, a gigging professional with at least ten years under his belt. With no money, masks made out of bed foam, and a compromised concept, we all thought the extra experience could be a huge help.
I went to Jaime and gave him the honest truth of the situation, which he accepted like a true gentleman. Not that I felt much better about myself.
DELAY 2
The second filming delay came about due to a financial problem: namely my own. Specialty's Cafe and Bakery, an evil corporation posing as a progressive bakery, had recently appointed a new manager to oversee the closing crew. Due to my "sucking" at cleaning, she proceeded to slash my hours from 40 a week to 25. When I complained, she then bumped me down to 24. This effectively left me destitute, barely making enough money for rent, much less contribute to a film's budget. I could no longer afford the $400 investment, as it was suddenly needed for bills, food, etc. etc.
This meant I had to delay the shoot once again.
This also meant we lost our window to snag the Cinematographer.
Bradley had a wedding planned in the fall, and would therefore be unavailable until sometime in early November, three months away.
A planned October shoot, sans Brad, was also cancelled when a lucrative storyboard project landed in my lap which I absolutely could not say no to, financially or professionally.
I was pretty depressed.
WE FINALLY SHOOT
The shoot finally happened in November.
Par for the course, it turned out Nick's studio would be unavailable to use for the void sequence, as would his light kit and Canon7D. At the last minute, Brad discovered a renegade rental house in Burbank calling themselves 'Broke Ass Filmmakers' who had cheap prices and a strict 'NO DEPOSIT' policy in place (the website explained that deposits are usually a rip off). However, renting at any price cut into the budget money alloted to the D.P.
So, I did something deeply uncomfortable: I went back to Jamie and asked if he would do the movie for less money than I had previously offered. He not only said yes, but was also able to pad out the crew with his boyfriend Raphael (also of Specialty's) and our mutual friend Eli (ex Specialty's employee, filmmaker, and all around personality) who both helped out as Production Assistants and Ghouls.
Sami the costumer was also tied up, and so my girlfriend Amy picked up the slack and made all the costumes herself over the course of a few nights. In fact, at first she wasn't going to be involved at all - I thought it best if I kept these two worlds separate - but in the end she proved invaluable, also helping me pick out the snacks for the cast and crew, providing transportation, and playing a Ghoul.
The shoot chugged along over the weekend of November 11th - 12th. We had to convert my beloved void sequence into a room of billowing curtains due to a lack of black cloth, got thrown out of a location by an irate business owner, and had a lot of fun running around Los Angeles in costume without a permit. Even if no one could actually run in the masks, being as they had no peripheral vision and were incredibly uncomfortable to wear.
On the last day, we nabbed the subway shots (and encountered a SECOND film crew doing their own guerilla shoot on the same train), mistook a homeless person for one of the Ghouls, narrowly avoided a drag race occurring at one of our warehouse locations, and had a Spinal Tap moment while trying to get shots of worms writhing around Noah's feet: due to bad planning, the earthworms I bought were too small to register on camera, making it appear that Noah was standing on dirty concrete. However, after staying up for 48 hours straight, I had all the footage in the can, logged, and ready to go.
I BLEW IT
When I started to piece together my footage, I quickly realized that I had fucked it up.
Although the footage was gorgeous, it was also flat. Devoid of energy. Distinctly un-musical. I'd gone through the shoot in a dream state, numbly executing scenes, but had neglected to add any passion to it.
Even more horrifying, I had made a fatal error in how I shot my lead. Because this was supposed to be half short film/half music video, I should have found a way to shoot Noah that was slightly stylized, or abstract. Instead, I had just shot him in standard CU/MCU/WS's. Basically, it just played like a short, slightly cheesy horror movie. Not at all what I was after.
Luckily, we had come in under budget, and I had enough left over to schedule some 're shoots'.
WE SHOOT AGAIN
The first big change was our lead. With Noah unavailable (he works as a reporter, and due to festival season was very busy), I had to recast. I decided on casting a female lead instead of a male for a few reasons. Back during the pre-production period, the band had wanted a female in the lead, which I was resolutely against (too cliche'). However, there is a reason women end up being terrorized in most horror films: it creates tension based on the myth that women are the fairer sex. I decided to shoot her only in ECU's so the audience would connect with her emotionally while at the same time recognizing a horror film cliche'.
Since the lead would only be shown in CU's, I was able to reinstate the Void sequence, because I would need far less black cloth, and could extend the middle of the film by having the girl turn into a monster - I'd only need to make up part of her face!
I had a lead in Adrienne Petersen, who, with her husband John, had been helping me from the very beginning of production, Adrienne working as a Ghoul and John as a "Ghoul Wrangler" (getting the masks on turned out to be a two person job). Although Adrienne had no acting experience, she ended up impressing the hell out of everyone once we got shooting. And like Noah, also has a great pair of expressive and wild eyes.
In a lot of ways, the re-shoots where even more chaotic than the first. I'd had to get a 2nd job, and found myself working 12 - 15 hour days, then crawling home and working on the schedule and budget.
When budgeting out the equipment, I discovered Broke Ass Filmmaker's had ceased to exist, due to some sort of nervous breakdown from one of the owners. This was a huge problem because they were the only rental house in town that I could afford. "This fucking project is cursed!" was what I told anyone who asked how the project was going. Luckily, at the last minute, Jamie saved the day when he revealed that he OWNED a CanonRebel which he would be willing to let us borrow for the shoot! The Canon Rebel is the Cadillac to the 7D's Mercedes Benz, and I was able to edit the two different footage sources seamlessly.
When the shoot finally started, a nasty cold infected everybody on set. Making matters worse, the temperature dropped to the low twenties, which turned Adrienne's cold into the flu. If you watch carefully, you can see her shivering from a high fever while she's sitting on the bus stop at the end of the video.
This led me to the "fuck it" stage. Luckily, that state of mind can be very conducive for creative work. I also had some great last minute help: Two Ex-specialty's employees, Marty Bocanegra and his brother Javiar came out when we turned up short on Ghouls,
Eli returned, and Amy continued to work as transportation, Ghoul, and back rubber. Also, Hoku Uchiyama, one of my oldest friends, spent a night working our portable LED light and gels, which was a real kick for me as he'd just directed the 'Evelyn and Evelyn' video for Amanda Palmer!
We were even able to get better worm shots, having invested in three buckets of Nightcrawlers instead of the small earthworms used last time around.
THE END
Within hours of editing the new footage, I knew this thing had finally been wrangled into submission. The quality wasn't as high as I would have liked, and there were shots I wish I'd done better, but at least it had an energy and atmosphere to it, which is more important to me anyway.
Much to my surprise, the band reacted very positively as well, and shortly thereafter, from what I heard, so did the label ("they're really into it" Jason told me over the phone, in a voice that I swear sounds just like Charles Grodin).
Around this time I was also offered a full time position at the previously mentioned second job. I have since burned my Specialty's Cafe T-shirt and Khaki pants.
So there it is. Although I've lost sleep over the mistakes made on this project, I'm also really proud of the finished product. It's different from other work I've done, and working double duty to please not only my aesthetics but the band's was a terrific challenge. I also think I'd be bored out of my mind otherwise.
Lumerians - Life without Skin from m m on Vimeo.
LUMERIANS - LIFE WITHOUT SKIN CREDITS from Waylon Bacon on Vimeo.
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