… a blog post from Chairman’s Corner.

Hey hey hey everybody. Big day for me today. My band Nasalrod has just premiered a music video for our song “The Maker”, which has been a LONG time in the making!

SO much goes into making a music video. What’ll be the concept? Who’ll direct? Or edit? Might there be a way to do it on the cheap? What if someone who’s been working on it is suddenly no longer available? To be honest, there were MANY times that I didn’t think this video would ever be completed, as we had several bumps in the road.

Yet, just like with anything else in life, persistence pays. Sometimes you have to just keep plugging away – even if it seems that all hope is lost. Coming up with ideas to make a video engaging to the public (including yourself, of course) is one of the first huge hurdles. Obviously, you’ll want to have a plot – or at least a series of images – that will command attention. Brainstorming sessions begin, and sometimes everyone involved isn’t on the same page. As a result, you just keep talking it out with each other until an outline comes up that’ll click with everyone. This was one of the first huge hurdles with “The Maker” – let alone all of the more technical issues that inevitably arose once filming began!

Eventually, through a series of tumultuous debates, all of us involved with creating the video came to an agreement on what needs to happen throughout it, and what kind of basic working script to run with. Quite often, technical limitations forced us to to modify our original ideas. It was extremely important for us to be flexible with turning one original idea into a completely different concept – and usually on a dime! We started shooting our ideas. We had NO IDEA if the footage that we captured was going to actually work – we usually just crossed our fingers and hoped that it would.

A great editor became involved – we felt lucky. However, we had limited funds, and a higher paying gig came up for him – causing him to abandon the project for quite some time. We tried to find a replacement, but had no luck. There were folks that could actually help us, but they were out of our price range. Our director started learning how to edit himself – as this became the only way to move forward for a while! However, his learning curve for editing was huge, so progress became very SLOW. Basically, we were at a standstill.

With limited funds and no one to turn to for editing, it was very difficult to not give up hope. For a while, I more or less gave up on the whole thing. Then, something happened. The original editor (who we had the best chemistry with) finally finished his other job – so he was able to return to the project. A few months later, we were finally done – and just in time for the video’s announcement to also coincide with some tour dates that we had planned.

Conclusion: Keep plugging away, be patient (but persistent), and (most importantly) keep the band together! You never know when what *seems* impossible just might finally pan out.

Cheers,

Jeffrey “Chairman” Couch

Music lover, creator & collector

chairman@spinneymedia.com

Chairman currently enjoys freaking out & creating panic with his spastic rock band Nasalrod, which is based in Portland, Oregon. He created this blog to share his serious love of music, the arts, and physical media.