crossmakere

Saturday, 27 April 2013

GB Collective Launch With Callback Dreams

Greg on keys

Chad Saaiman rocking the stage

The GB Collective

From the side of the stage and I did not take these pictures so please do not invite me to take pics for your wedding or parties. Sometimes you get weird requests from family and friends.

Jobie One, MC for the night and dj too. Men can multi task too

The rainbow nation crowd.

GB Collective doing the first single that features Nothende

Clint Brink doing his thing on stage.

Shaun V and Jonny on stage.

Thanks to the kind people at Zag for allowing us to use their space

The crowd

The poster that got everyone to the venue and hopefully it can get you to the cd shop too or iTunes.

GB Collective album is probably the best album I have heard in five years. It has solid jams, very well produced and the talent on it is world class.
Organising this launch was a mission and a half but the team pulled it off and everyone played their roles very well.

Sunday, 21 April 2013

AKA - Working On A New Album

The set up

Interview for Channel O Africa

We shot an AKA interview for a show called Volt on Channel O Africa. The show does not play in SA but other 47 or 52 countries on the continent not sure about the number but a lot of countries.

We had to interrupt his recording session and he was a good sport about it. His producer Sticky was not too happy about the interruption, we understand his reasoning though. He thinks an artist should just focus on the recording part while working on an album. It is a double edged sword, though.

Khaya Mthethwa ft Proverb Lil Means A Lot - Behind the Scenes Pictures

One of the dancers behind a wall we had just painted and it gave us a very nice rustic feel

One the best DPs on the continent, Mr Dave Pienaar (Google search the name please. The dude has shot over 500 music videos from P Square, D Banj, Proverb, Tuface, and now Khaya)

The madness behind the pretty pictures

Khaya handling a few interviews. There were over 6 media houses covering the shoot and it was a bit of a challenge to control our set. We love the PR but sometimes when you have too many cameras on set it can be a distraction.

Proverb doing his bit for PR.

Khaya and director Jobie Bakama (I was assistant director on this one)

Khaya and the Dancers (Shout-out to Zinto)

The organised chaos

Khaya rehearsing

Setting up

Another set up

Location from extreme wide

The brief that we got from Khaya and his team was to keep everything simple. We shot the Move music video but it was directed by Tebogo Malope and it had very intricate visuals. It was Visual Poetry. This video was not too much of a challenge, it was quiet simple to execute. We shot everything in one location and the crew was not too big, but small and efficient. We wanted to showcase more of his performance repertoire and shoot it clean. Anuq from Zinto did the choreography on the video and she did a stellar job.

We had mad fun shooting this video, it is always a pleasure to work with Khaya or Proverb.

Callback Dreams, We Shoot Pretty Pictures.

Saturday, 16 March 2013

Proverb - Work It Out Music Video Shoot

Single Cover

One of the many set-ups

The stars of the music video. She is Proverb's personal trainer in real life too.

Day two of the shoot. A crew of three people and Proverb. We shot all the exteriors at Wits University because "GYM is an acronym for Grow Your Mind"

from left: Jobie (DP) Me (Director), Chabi (On-set PA), Ziona (Make-up), Suzan (Production Co-ordinator) , Proverb and Beasty (Co-star of the video). This is the whole crew, you don't always need 30 people on set to eat your food, lol.

We have been shooting tons of music videos. I think this year alone we have already done over six. One of the best thing about it is to be able to learn new skills. It takes someone special to execute big budget videos and small budget videos and make sure that they are not a world apart in terms of quality. I don't think we are doing too bad in that department. If you have a big budget you tend to just throw money at the problems and with a small budget you are forced to be more creative and it allows you to experiment because there is more room for mistakes. Your mistakes won't cost you. Big budgets allows you to have access to the best cameras, locations, crew, editors, more time in grade, etc.

I really enjoy shooting with Proverb because he is a seasoned professional who makes your job very easy as a director.

Work It Out was shot in a day and a half and it was a stress free shoot. I had mad fun and there was a lot of room to play around and experiment.

The video will be released some time later this year, we have not decided when we will drop it because My Day Will Come is currently picking up heavy steam. My Day Will Come video was shot by the exact same crew with more or less the same budget. Here is the link for My Day Will Come music video...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AugwMFFkaEM. Enjoy.

Khaya Mthethwa Ft Proverb Music Video Location Scouting

Our first set-up

We painted the wall because our DP Dave Pienaar hated how it looked and it came out very nicely at the end though

We were lucky that this set up was in the afternoon and the light was easier to control. Light coming in was not too heavy because it was bit cloudy throughout the day.

We originally wanted to shoot Proverb's part against this backdrop but we used other spaces in the building. Sometimes new ideas come as the shoot is progressing.

Callback Dreams Shot List

Location makes or breaks a video or any other shoot for that matter. We were given a brief by Khaya to do a specific treatment for his second music video featuring Proverb and this required a very specific location that over-looks the city.

Above are the pictures I took when were doing our reece with The Jobie. Once you see the final product you will see the difference a good DP, good lighting, good camera movement does for this simple looking space.

The concept of the video is very simple on purpose and it is performance based. It is just about 'pretty pictures' and glossy with a bit of rough edges.

Callback Dreams "We Shoot Pretty Pictures"