INNER CIRCLE - Three Some Video Behind the Scenes (Blog)

Hello inner circle. I am in Maryland until next Tuesday. It is the first time I have been back since the infamous video I filmed at my old high school over Christmas.

People were very confused about why I chose to film (“shoot” is a word I should probably avoid here) that video at an actual high school. Let alone my own alma mater.

For me, this decision was central to the entire concept. Whenever people use the shorthand “That video where you threatened to sh**t up your high school,” I am quick to correct them. Actually, I said I thought about doing it 15 years ago and didn’t. That’s very different. 

But regardless, it doesn’t really matter now. Because nobody cares anymore. People move on, they forget. And they don’t care. 

That project was an exploration of something very personal to me, a way of expressing something in the only way I know how. It’s difficult to articulate when people ask me about it, because if I could, I wouldn’t have had to make it in the first place.

The creative challenge I’ve found excites me the most is trying to justify the unjustifiable. We would all like to believe that we could never be one of these monsters. But we could. All of us could. 

Someday, when I’m a more developed artist, I will revisit the concept. There are a few ideas that I’ve circled around my entire life— that is one (FBI, if you’re reading this, I mean a creative idea.)

But for now, I need to keep training. Exercising different muscles. That was my rational behind the latest video, “It Started As A Three Some. It Ended With Murder.”

Directing your own performance is difficult because the part of your brain doing the acting feels very vulnerable. And the more vulnerable you are, the less you want anyone else to see it.

If you’re not careful, this can result in your work becoming very stilted and uninteresting. Because you start working at it until you feel totally secure with the end result. 

You have carefully constructed enough artifice that the idea of showing the world doesn’t scare you at all. Because you aren’t showing any part of yourself you don’t want anyone else to see.

So this video was an experiment in that regard. Every time I would have normally stopped and said, “Ah forget it, this sucks, I’m starting over,” I kept going. Because I’ve realized that voice in my head isn’t making the end result better. It’s holding me back. 

This moment that’s making me uncomfortable, that I stumbled into, what would happen if I just let it hang there? 

I don’t know how funny or entertaining this video is. I don’t even really remember what I said. Maybe it isn’t. But I trusted the position I put myself into and the instincts that got me out. And it is what it is. 

I tried to intentionally force myself into a corner. The video was the end result of a single day of complete focus. I woke up, wrote an outline, and searched for a hotel room that looked visually interesting.

Last time I did a shitty hotel, let’s try a nice hotel this time. Another bonus was, it was more expensive. So I couldn’t afford more than one night. Whatever I got my first attempt was what it had to be. And I had to get something. 

They let me check in early, which was a godsend. I got there around noon and realized the light was horrible. So I went to Best Buy and got one of those wireless lights you can control with your phone. Which was perfect, because I could carry it around with me and the camera. Instead of trying to lighting the room, I could just light myself.

If nothing else, I am really proud of how the video looks. I turned off every other light in the room so that only the natural sunlight remained. And I made the mobile light warm. I also color graded to enunciate this difference. The result is that the room around me is blue and cold. I wanted it to look like I was telling a story around a campfire. The orange light illuminating me from underneath. 

I can’t look at the viewfinder while shooting, so I just have to wing it and hope it looks good. I end up pleasantly surprised by a lot of things. The shot in the thumbnail of the Chat GPT video, where I’m silhouetted in darkness, ended up being my favorite shot of video, and it just happened randomly by accident. 

At the end of the day, I had a three hour long video that I hated and thought was garbage. But it was all I had. 

Shooting three straight hours of 4K video is very technically challenging. The primary reason for the “bathroom breaks” is because I have a spastic bladder and just actually have to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes. But I also use those to change batteries, SD cards, etc. 

The Sony A7III can only shoot 30 minutes at a time before it shuts itself off. If anyone knows how to avoid this i'd love to know. To maintain the illusion of one continuous take, I rest the gimbal in a stationary position, and leave the frame. Then come back, cut, change out anything I need to, start the camera again, leave the frame, and walk back in so that after a little trimming, the two fit together seamlessly.

I still consider it one long take, because I never stop for longer than maybe 30 seconds. If you wait too long, the edit won’t be seamless, because the light will have changed slightly due to the changing position of the sun. So I couldn’t cut the camera, then go home and wait until tomorrow. 

You may notice that there is a gap of silence during all the “breaks” when the audio cuts out. At first, I added title cards to each break. So when I left the frame, the sound would cut out, corresponding to a title card that said, “Part 3,” etc. 

There was also a title card at the end that said, “The End.” I eventually changed my mind and removed all of these, because it was too heavy-handed. Behind-the-camera Dan was intruding too much. It was ruining the illusion. 

As a compromise, I left the audio gaps in, so that the intended effect of the title cards would register on a subconscious level. I really love room tone, and I always try to push it as loud as I can. The ambient hums of different spaces I find fascinating.

This created an unforeseen problem. Every time I go on the balcony, there was music playing from the loudspeaker. I loved that this happened. Unfortunately, all the music was copyrighted, and YouTube blocked the first version of the video.

So I had to isolate my speech from the loudspeaker music, then go in and reconstruct the ambient sound of the balcony scenes from scratch. The hardest part was getting the transition from the room out to the balcony to sound like it would if I was actually walking from one location to the other. 

It’s not perfect. I wish it hadn’t been a problem. The songs themselves that were playing added so much to the atmosphere, and also effected the performance decisions I was making in the moment. But, tough nuggets. Had to suck it up.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I hope you like the video, but if not, it’s fine. It was an experiment that I enjoyed and am happy with, that I also hate every second of and wish I never made.