Music Video Production On Set With The Corbins

1. Music Video Production: On Set With The Corbins www.pixelpi.ca

2. The Corbins - I'm Not Sorry • As a video production company based in Toronto, one of our long time clients, Steven Tsitsos, has been in the music game a long time. He started as a child prodigy, moving into classical orchestra travelling across Europe and now has set his sights on pushing his career further by breaking into punk rock scene with his band, The Corbins. • Steven came to our video production company office and wanted to make his first music video, using our videography services for his song, I’m Not Sorry. It took a while to make this video and I’ll outline all of the different stages, locations and film/video production services we used in and around Toronto.

3. Setting up the shots for the music video • The song was fairly simple. The production started with shooting the music video against a white backdrop and adding some Marshall amps behind it as props. After they were set in, we had to to light the scene with high angle ARRI fresnel lights and a couple soft boxes near the front. It is always tricky when lighting 4 band members and a white background with out getting any harsh shadows! • We had to find a way to disperse a large amount flower pedals throughout the entire video production. Days before, it was our task to track down and buy bags of fake flower pedals to shoot in the scene. Thanks to Production Services Toronto, we were able to rent large scale fans to be able to shoot the pedals high into the air, so that it would look like it was raining flower pedals.

4. Waterfront video production • After we finished the first shoot indoors, Steven decided we needed some outdoor shots to spice up the video production and overall production value of his music video. We decided on a number of other locations. First, we started down on Toronto’s waterfront and shot with a series of mascots to get a surreal ‘dream-like’ setting. • We had to rent a number costumes from a Toronto prop production company and create a door to be constructed on the end of a pier. All of this, we had to load in early and set up all of the props before sunrise. Since we decided to use a Steadicam, to get a dreamy, floating camera as Steven walked through the door. The entire video production was a little chilly and windy but we were able to wrap everything on time.

5. Abandoned Building • Whenever someone asks my video production company to shoot a music video in an abandoned building in Toronto, I always have to laugh. It is extremely difficult to find anything like that in Toronto, find the appropriate permits and gather all of the audiovisual production services to go along with it. • We were lucky enough to travel a little out of the city to be able to shoot some of the scenes for I’m Not Sorry. We had a friend who helped us out on a location scout and we were able to find a great location and production services set away from prying eyes.

6. Hall of Mirrors • The final location that we needed to get was a ‘hall of mirrors’ effect. We decided to reach out to our friends over at Trinity Square Video and they were kind enough to let us use their gallery space for a night video shoot. We had to construct the hall of mirrors with 40 cheap Wal-Mart mirrors, string and galvanized piping. Since we were shooting from the side we only needed to create a 180 degree axis. • We engineered a a piping stand that we could hang the mirrors on string and have Steven walk past them. Since we didn’t have a huge budget we had to keep the shots tight. As for any reverse shots, we hung a green screen and composited any additional parts of the room out. • Have a look at our video and let us know what you think! • To check out more on the Corbins, check out their YouTube Channel.