Music Videos, Beats and More

Chriscol feat. Madlin Gabriel – ‘Private Show’ music video by Avene

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Chriscol feat. Madlin Gabriel – ‘Private Show’ music video by Avene.

The third video I have completed for Chriscol, this time featuring Madlin Gabriel on vocals. The previous videos I did for him being Shine De Lite and She Fire. Once again, like She Fire, one of faster tracks. And definitely something different compared to most of the videos I do. Nice to have shots of dancers to work with.

Chriscol feat. Madlin - Private Show music video

This video was shot using Chriscol’s own Canon 550D. It was the first time I’d actually shot anything with the camera. As a result, I didn’t really have a good feel for it, but I’m quite happy with the end result 🙂 The camera just had the standard kit lens on it which was ok, although something a bit faster would have been nice. As much as I thought rolling shutter would be a problem shooting hand held, it wasn’t so bad. There were just a few of the outdoor shots (most of which I didn’t use), that I noticed a few issues. It was all shot with the camera in manual mode, but I couldn’t figure out how to set custom colours on the camera, and didn’t really have time to play around with it either.

One huge issue I had was with the lights in the hallway with all the graffiti. There was a lot of flickering throughout those clips from the lights. Quite bad really! I had to edit out individual frames where the lights would flash. A friend has had the same problem with his 550D also. I’m sure there’s a reason for it, but this is something I’ve never ever encountered before since I began shooting video back in the late 90s. Even shooting on 30P and 24P cameras. Another problem I’d never encountered before either was the sensor overheating. It wasn’t a huge problem, but was annoying. Compared to my Canon S95? The low light performance of the S95 was far better than the kit lens used here. At f2.0 compared to f3.5, it would have to be. Thankfully I had my red head lighting kit for the shots in the dance studio, and overall the shots looked nice.

An unexpected highlight of the day for me (unrelated to the video) was meeting Rosano, an old school graffiti artist who was also a part of Sound Unlimited Posse, an early pioneering Sydney hip hop group who later became known as Renegade Funktrain. The studio is run by Rosano’s wife Maya. It was great meeting the guy again after all these years. His graf crew Fab4 (Future Art Beat Four) for whom his tag was Snooze, were one of the most highly respected crews in Sydney back in the 80s. I first met him at a few Sound Unlimited shows around 1990 with a friend who was a big fan of the group. We even appeared in their Unity music video (I’m wearing a bright green cap in a couple of crowd shots towards the end). Speaking of which, that was a big production from what I recall. They had huge truck, loads of production gear, lights, a director, a guy shooting Steadicam, proper film cameras etc. Nothing like how I make videos 😉 They were signed to Sony, so I can only imagine how expensive that clip would have been. It did look nice though.

Now for a couple of ‘before and afters’. This first one below was from the hallway where the light flickered. It didn’t appear to be flickering in real life, only in the captured video. As you can see here, there’s some nasty ISO noise. I had to bump it to 1600 ISO. Thankfully as always, Neat Video fixed that.

Chriscol - Private Show before

I tried a few different colour treatments with this video, but ended up sticking with something that wasn’t too far from the original. I’d even tried using Magic Bullet Mojo on it, but that didn’t work out too well. You can also see in this shot below that I’ve used the Sony Fill Light plugin the brighten a few of the darker areas.

Chriscol - Private Show after

In this shot of Madlin, one thing you might be able to spot is the ISO noise on the wall at the back. Neat Video actually had a really difficult time dealing with that. I eventually found a setting that worked, but it was tricky. I’ve never had this much difficulty cleaning up footage from the S95, even on the low light pool shots in the Giz video. A red head light had been used here also. And another thing I should mention is that I used my home made dolly for a few shots in this video including this one. I wasn’t moving it that fast, so the movement might not be as noticeable.

Chriscol feat. Madlin - Private Show before

So below is the cleaned up version. It turned out quite nice. The video was shot in 720P at 50fps. Probably not a good idea, but I wanted the option of having a few slow motion shots. Something I can’t do with the S95. That I didn’t end up using much slow motion.

Chriscol feat. Madlin - Private Show after

Lastly, here’s a screenshot of the final edit. This was the first time I’d actually used the Boris BCC7 extrude text plugin in a video. It worked well for the intro title, and Chriscol was happy with that.

Chriscol feat. Madlin - Private Show screenshot

Feel free to leave any comments below, thanks.

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About Avene
Sydney based artist specialising in creating music videos, cinematography, music production & beat making, digital art, sound design & photography.