This was like a reality television show 72 hour film festival to shoot this Christian Rock Band…. The Jonny Wright Band.
My right hand is Rachel Kay with AppleBox Imaging , brilliant photographer friend and together we orchestrated chaos( produced, creative direction, scrip, directed, Lighting design, ward robe, post production, CD design, Photography, Video Editing) in the name of spreading their message of Hope. We got the go for the job on Thursday afternoon for creating a multimedia package that included filming a music video, kickstarter video, band photos, performance photos, and singles of all members. They didn’t have a concept so we had to carve it out ourselves At that point it was a scramble to shout locations, book locations,develop the concept, rent the equipment, get the help. The band they were in Austin for 5 days doing different shows and little did they know that they would have an intense 72 hour film experience.

Our first day of shooting started at 5 am in a field that overlooks the Austin skyline. It goes along with the lyrics of the song “Let your Light Shine” Exposing the light in the darkness, the city on the hill. The band had a show the night before and got 3 hours of rest. Between all the video photography equipment and music equipment it takes an hour plus to set it all up. So they played their song as the sun rose… over and over and over again as we shot a time lapse and playback. We lucked out because the grounds keeper for the location happened to be on location at 5am and turned the sprinklers off. 100k in equipment would of been hosed! I have insurance to cover that sort of calamity but still. To our dismay the equipment was in a FIRE ANT village. Oh my glory- that was awful. The thing with Texas – it has all these critters that eat you and bite you all the time. It hurts- Im not a fan.

We had two other location switches that day. Which is a considerable amount of effort with all the equipment. The sad thing after we were done- 14 hour day, day one, the guys had a performance.
That was what got handed to us- the time crunch, the complexity. Usually something like this takes at least a month to produce, a week to shoot. Its not in the best interest of anyone to be fatigued. It takes so much longer to create, The guys had a difficult maintaining a high energy level on camera, so we had to do additional takes.

The thing about shooting a music video is that you play the song over and over 1,000 times. So that song is engrained into all of our psyche for life. So at least its a song that inspires hope.

Take a look at their website www.jonnywrightband.com

Here is the kickstarter that Rachel Kay and I created :

Check out their Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/JonnyWrightBand?ref=ts&fref=ts

Production created by Natalie Cass
Rachel Kay