Kiss Kiss Goodnight

Finally seeing the light of day, Here is the Canary Sing Freak show and my usual write up to go with it. I’m not going to lie, this video took forever to setup, then it took even longer to get out… no one’s real fault just young people trying to do one thing while life gots them doing another.

The 1st concept that I came up with was to the do the video like “The Drop” by Pharycid but the 1st verse was just too fast to play backwards. So, the second concept that I want to do was the “Spike Lee” effect (the seeming to float effect). I didn’t pull it off all that well for a few a reasons…

1. I didn’t build a track to push them on

2. I don’t have an updated version of Final Cut Pro, So I couldn’t take the “shake” off

But, people say that they liked it better with the Shake on…

It was hard to shoot some of the shots because of the natural light and the time of day change but I found a great window around 2ish where I managed to get a lot of shots in before it got dark. There was a tiny little photoshoot type thing at the end, but I’m a guy for behind the camera… not in front but I did make a cameo (my 1st one)!!!!

I’m just glad that it’s done and I can move on to the next project, every time I start a project I feel like I can’t focus on my next project 100% till my current project is a wrap and out to the public.

I hope you enjoy… KissKiss and Goodnight

Wes Goodlife

So I found this today kinda by accident, but it is the making of the “Cloud City” Video I did with Khingz. I always like these making of videos cause I’m usually never behind the camera, so seeing how they turn out is always a treat for me. I remember this day very well, after we shot the video we went back to Kitty Wu’s house and got some bomb ass breakfast, I loves me some Kitty Wuwuwu, any ways Blaq Han Solo Coming very soon.

PS: I always hate to hear my voice over a camera… I don’t sound like that in my head, so when ever I hear my self talking I be like “Damn my voice don’t match my body… I gotta lose weight or talk with a deeper voice.”

This was a pleasure to shot. We (Khingz and I) were actually gearing up to shoot the video for “Blaq Han Solo”, but due to last minute changes we had to push it back for two weeks. But since we were both there… me and my camera and Khingz with his mp3 file, we decided to shot something.

We met up at some coffee house around 2pm. We chopped it up and thought about ideas… about an hour later, we shot the video. We did several takes… I think around 8 or so, but all I needed was one. When I got my perfect take we switched the angle just for shits and giggles then headed to the wonderful Miss Kitty Wu’s house for some pancakes and OJ. So enjoy… Cloud City.

Wow, this was by far the toughest video I ever had to work on. It wasn’t just the editing but everything was wrong on this set. There was drug usage, people getting drunk, girls not showing up, girls who did show up couldn’t dance, spilled monster cans all over equipment, and not to mention….

“it was hotter than Lucifer’s taint in this bitch.”

Post production sucked the big dick with all teeth and charged $100 buck extra

Jesus saves, and Mark does too.

Finally this video has seen the light of day (and so is my personal write up it about.) When I pitched the idea to GMK it sounded so simple…

We are going to put you in little boxes like the Brady Bunch then we are going to have a bunch of Adult Swim cartoons around you… Cool? COOL!!!

But all in all, the video was easy to shoot, but editing was a pain in the ass.

Mic Phenom
I won’t Fail
Dir:Wes Goodlife

Damn its about time this video came out!!!! I shot this video the same weekend I shot Dan Fajans “Shadow of a Doubt” video, but we had to re-shoot the second half of the video which made for some major complication. After several hit and mess dates to re-shoot and me upgrading from the HV20 to the HV30, we were finally able to make it happen. However since such a long time had passed between the shoots, he no longer had the black shirt or hat and we went from shooting in the spring to shooting in the summer… so my man Mic was rocking that hot ass jacket in like 90 degree weather.

When it came down to editing, I had to cut the song short… I did this in final cut and used the audio fader to blend it. This was the 1st video that I actually decided, researched, and applied some color correction to it also. You can see that in my previous post… for what it’s worth… I really like this video…

This was shot on a Hv20 and 30 at 24p cinema. I used a wide angle lens and a 35mm adapter. The lighting was all natural.

The video was edited on Final Cut and the color correction was done with DvShades.

This was a mini doc I had did for GMK and one little video that fucked me up. If you didn’t know I was planning to do a Seattle Hip Hop Documentary. I consider my self to be a creative and budding film maker and the idea of a documentary would be hella easy… but some thing told me to try and make a mini-doc first. After kicking it with my dude GMK. He told me he wanted to do some type of doc for his Songs For Bloggers LP; figured it was the best of both world. WRONG…
Working with GMK was a pleasure as usual but then when it came time to do post production… everything feel through. I felt like the interview I had done was boring, the camera work was wack, and the audio was lacking. This was hard for me to do… I had to cut and trim the video into something I thought people would want to see… which made me think about my documentary. I really needed to sit down and redesign the concept… trimming it to make it something people would not only watch but be like “That shit was dope”… and “Engaging”. I’m so glad I made this mini doc… It saved my documentary from becoming a total shit storm…

So I have gone back to the drawing boards and plan to start filming later this summer… I FUCKING HATE PUSHING BACK, but it needs to be done to make the film dope…

Cheers…

Dan Fajans
Shadow of a Doubt
Worth the Time
dir: me :)

Oh my, this video was sooo fucked up to make I had double booked my Easter weekend shooting two videos in a 72 hour time line. Not the smartest idea I ever had… but it turned out pretty dope. Everything that could go wrong went wrong on this shoot. I woke up 40 mins late so I showed up 20mins late, then it started to rain, I couldn’t find my iPod speakers, then I left my iPod at home (but it was really in my back pocket the whole time), got chemical black mess on my face, and then I lost his friends umbrella… super not the business…

The original concept for the song was one that I had for while. I wanted to do it as a fan video for a Gnarls Barkley song (No Time Soon), but I never got a round to it. After I heard the song… I knew I found a home for my idea. This is also the second video that my pimped out Chrysler makes a cameo…

I’m glad that every thing worked out in the long run. I stayed very close to the concept minus a few things here and there and the video was shot in about 8hrs and the video edited in about a month (I really need to step up my color correction skills.)

Shot on a naked Hv20
Edited on Final Cut

Here’s the treatment:

Scene fades in:

Downtown Seattle day:.

Homeless man lays buried under some blankets and filth.
***cue music***
The homeless man wakes, and checks his watch (a watch that is too expensive for a homeless man)
He sets up his living area, folding his blankets and arranging his living space. He pulls out a bottle of hand sanitizer and uses it to sanitize his face and hands, before pulling a half eaten sandwich out of his bag. He enjoys his breakfast as the sun sits on the ocean (breath taking view)
The homeless man checks his watch once more; he quickly finishes up his sandwich, packs up his back pack, and grabs his sign (a white sign written with black letters)

He walks the streets of Downtown Seattle, rapping the verses (as if the camera is not looking at him, picture a man rambling to him self) holding the sign.
People try to offer him money or food but he declines it, has he scales the city rapping.

Has he cross an intersection, he is hit by a car…. The driver jumps out to see if he is ok. The Homeless gets up dusts him self off and continues to rap holding the sign.

As the day comes to an end, the homeless man makes his way back to his living space. He puts away his sign, lays out his bed, and crawls up under the covers…

Scene fades out:
The End

**I’m thinking of maybe trying to have different sayings on the signs. So that every different shot it might say some thing different… maybe have a whole phrase that the sign is saying but the audience has to watch the full video and pay attention to understand.

**The video can be shot in one day but it would work best if it was shoot over two preferable a weekend or some thing.

**The car scene with you being hit will be very easy to achieve and you will not be harmed at all… nor will the car.

**I’m completely open to any ideas or notes you may have… this is just a blue print and this is your video so if any thing is not what you want it to be then hit me up…

**I’m excited to do a video like this, with your song and my visual concept we can make a haunting video that connects people to the song.

cheers…

GMK -Music Swinger x GITS
Song for Bloggers
edit: Wes Goodlife

This is another one of my anime and music mash-up, but this time it was for Seattle hot spitter GMK…

Ok I had the concept of this video for a while, and I was going to chop it up to K-os -High Way7… but after GMK saw my last video for Kanye… he wanted me to put some thing together for him. He asked me on Monday… I started Saturday… finished Saturday two hours later.

The video was “leaked” and was credited to some one else on youtube… pretty fucking fucked up if you ask me, but thats the nature of the beast… life is never the way you want it to be… but GOD DAMNIT if this video ain’t dope!!!!!!

Lazy Genius
Where the Sidewalk ends
Higher Education…
Dir: Wes Goodlife

Tech:
Naked HV20, HD 24p, natural light, mp3 file for audio edited on FCE, no color correction used.

Where the sidewalk ends was my 1st video that was created by Twitter…. I had meet the artist Lazy Genius on twitter and offered to do a video for him. He sent me over a gang of tracks, and I was going to shot a video for the song, “Blues in the Water”, but after I heard “Where the Sidewalk ends” I knew this was the video to shoot. Now this video was a pain in the ass to shoot… it was the 1st video that I shot with my new HV20 (I’m always behind on the techno curve… because I’m broke). So these guys asked me if I wanted them to wear something special… I was like no not really (thinking they would look presentable) but the main character was wearing some super faded colors… it was so faded that Coco thought I should put the video in black and white to off set it.

The video was shot in some thing crazy like three hours (40mins was spent finding smokes) and edited on Final Cut using the Mac… I later added the subtitles to give some type of story to make the video follow better… I personally think it sucks, but I feel that way about all my videos… it’s just me being that Emo type artist.

Kanye West x American Pop
Heartless
Edit:Wes Goodlife

This is the second in the series of cartoon and music mash-ups that I dubbed “Far Wes”. I was watching an interview for Kanye because every one knows that I “stans” homeboy and saw that Hype showed him American Pop which in turn made him want to shoot this video. So I went down to the local Blockbuster only to find the movie over at Hollywood video. So rented it, watched it, loved it, and set it to the side forever. Then one day while on duty, I figured I’d knock it out… Three hours later I had this… mash-up that made me hella proud… till I showed it to my old lady… she was like “The 1st half was hard to watch” So yeah I hate it too lol… Emo-artist at large.

Janelle Monae
Smile
Metropolis- The Chase Suite
Cut: Wes Goodlife

This is a little project I have been working on. I’m taking my favorite songs and cutting them to animes and animations. I am a huge fan of Janelle Monae and her cd was titled “Metropolis –The Chase Suite”… which was the same name as my favorite anime Metropolis which was about the same thing in away. A Romeo and Juliet type love story about a boy and robot girl who didn’t know she was robot (its hella dope really go rent it.)

I used a little program that I downloaded called iShow which lets me copy from computer screen. I then uploaded the files into FCE and took it from there.

I wanted to work on my story telling skills and create a new short film (kinda) out of the clips from the film, unlike the film… the love connection was never established in the movie, but I wanted to really pull on the heart string with this video. Janelle’s voice is haunting and the song is not really a sad song but when given the right imagery and subtitles (which I added myself and they were not in the movie), I was able to make a moody and depressing video… I’m hella proud of it…

This was my “big” Debut to the seattle community as a director. Mic Phenom’s video was like the warm -up. We shot this video over two days in the U-district. This was the beginning of the GMK/We$ Goodlife connection that would more videos. I shot this on a naked Panasonic AG-HVX200 using the P2 media card system. It was edited on Final Cut Express. I truly love this camera and I hope one day I can buy… or the Canon Xh-A1.