VIDEO: Steampunk Parody In Production

"Band-aids don't fix bullet holes"

It has been an exhilerating few weeks of production for an upcoming parody video of the most popular song on the radio right now. The idea sprouted in my head a month or so ago after seeing the amazing music video for Taylor Swift's Bad Blood directed by Joseph Kahn and featuring pretty much every famous woman out there. I love the themes of the song, and the nods to many famous action movies woven into the story of the video.

I've been itching for a new video project for a few months and with the Coldwater Steampunk Festival 2015 theme being 'Wild Wild West', the idea presented itself to me almost fully formed. Working with no budget but a gaggle of eager and highly creative friends, the pre-production for this video formed itself in just over a week. Namely costuming and props became our biggest struggle and most inginuitive creations. People scowered the back corners of their parent's garages, dollar store nerf guns were painted, and many late nights creating the perfect costumes. I am eternally greatful for the number of people who willingly stepped in to help with even the oddest of requests. On the technical production side I was flying solo (scheduling problems blocked the way of us getting the Sir Sam Funk team back together) and on a tight timeline for the day of the festival.

The day of filming involved a lot of running, some rain, and even more heat - but mostly lots of excited adrenaline. Everyone stepped up to the plate and gave nothing less than bad-ass performances.

I am now in the grueling post-production side of things, editing together a rough cut for the end of the month and then hopefully moving into colour correction, final effects, and sound. Unlike with Sir Sam Funk, we opted to not lipsync with the song - knowing we will probably have to record our own cover at some point. This has allowed a bit more creative freedom in Post that we didn't have with Sir Sam Funk. With how fast this production was thrown together, we still storyboarded everything, but it was more looser than the strict cuts we had for Sir Sam Funk. While there have been a lot of similarities in these productions, this was definitely a different approach to a creative parody.

I'm hoping for a late-fall release with this video, but with school starting up soon it may get pushed even later, depending on how things go!