×

Mick McCleery's video: Christmas in Jersey 2005 - BILLY FRANKS

@'Christmas in Jersey' (2005) - BILLY FRANKS
THE BACK STORY: First off, Happy Holidays! Ok, now that that is out of the way, let's get down to business and talk about the making of this video. 'Christmas in Jersey' was by no means a 'quick shoot' video. It took just about a year to collect all of the 'elements' that would make it into the finished piece. It was February of 2005 and Billy had finally brought his band (a trio at this point) over to the USA. There was Lee Hirons (the other 'brother' from the 'Faith Brothers') on bass. And Jasper (his last name escapes me right now) on drums. They came out for a week of gigs and trips to NYC and AC. Bill had recently recorded his 'Christmas Card' to his American/Jersey friends and we were hopeful to get some good 'Christmassy' weather to shoot a video for the song. We were in luck. While the boys were playing a gig at Rmacs (now the 'Taproom') in Haddon Township we were struck by a surprise snowstorm (at least it ended up being much heavier than predicted). So, after the gig, we jumped outside and shot the footage on the snowy street just outside the bar (not quite the 'Haddon Avenue' of the song -- 'Crystal Lake' Avenue sufficed nicely). After that, we drove up to the Black Horse Pike and shot some bits there. The next day, after work, the snow was still coming down. I rushed (as they kept predicting it was going to end) over to Johnny Innocenzo's house (where all of the guys were staying) and we shot the daytime snowy elements. Johnny operating the second camera. With that footage 'in the can' we paused on the video for a bit. Lee and Jasper headed back to London. Billy stayed on as he was headed out to Denver with me (Gary and Mike were coming along too) for a film festival in Golden, Colorado (just outside of Denver) where my movie 'The Altruist', would be screening. Once checked into our 'ski style' hotel in Golden, Billy and I took advantage of the fireplace in the lobby and shot the 'by the fireplace' stuff. Fast forward to October of 2005. The boys (Gary and Mike) and I were hard at work on 'Tribute This!' and Billy had come out to the States to shoot the 'Storyteller' elements for that film. Knowing that I wanted to get the 'Christmas in Jersey' video together for the upcoming holiday season, I asked him to throw that song in the lineup as well. He did, and at this shoot we had four cameras going, so good 'coverage'. The editing was wrapped up just before Christmas in 2005, possibly 2006 (I like to think it was 2005, but I do work slowly). Regardless, I can see that it was uploaded to YouTube in 2006 (that original version can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-EJP_TWMYM ) TECHNICAL STUFF: The video is pretty close to how it was back when I first made it. But I did have to totally re-edit using the original as a 'storyboard'. When the original was uploaded, YouTube was still in a 'non-widescreen' format. I used a white letterbox around the footage and this was my only copy I had. In the interest of quality I decided to get rid of the letterbox so had to re-edit from the original source footage... As a side note, for anyone wondering why I am 're-uploading' these videos (I mean really? Why not just go with the version already on YouTube?) Well, back in the day YouTube had file size and quality limitations, so these are all relatively 'low resolution'. Now, YouTube can handle all the way up to HD, and as I do want to make this the place for all of my videos, I think it's worth the time and effort to put up the best version I can. NEW TWISTS: This is the same video as the 2005/2006 version up until 2:21. After that I changed the 'friends' inserts to just Billy singing (the full reason is below in the 'reflection' section). As for other changes, I did 'keyframe' one shaky shot of Billy in the UK and made it somewhat less shaky. And reframed the whole video into 16 by 9 (from the original 4 by 3), keyframing where necessary. REFLECTION: Bill has often spoken of uniting his two 'bands' (his actual band in the UK, and his 'band of friends' in the USA), knowing this, the original video had a bunch of shots of these two 'bands' (of friends). The USA stuff is from a meeting we had about 'Tribute This!' (covered by five angles and we also did a nice 'cheers' in it). The UK stuff is from some video footage Billy had been shooting of his gang in the studio and while on the road 'gigging'. I figured that this stuff (with all of the 'friends') might not make a whole lot of sense to the casual viewer. The original version can be found here - http://youtu.be/DpJ8_nf6T5c Merry Christmas, m mccleery

32

2
Mick McCleery
Subscribers
1.8K
Total Post
58
Total Views
1.4M
Avg. Views
24.6K
View Profile
This video was published on 2012-12-15 00:41:55 GMT by @Mick-McCleery on Youtube. Mick McCleery has total 1.8K subscribers on Youtube and has a total of 58 video.This video has received 32 Likes which are higher than the average likes that Mick McCleery gets . @Mick-McCleery receives an average views of 24.6K per video on Youtube.This video has received 2 comments which are lower than the average comments that Mick McCleery gets . Overall the views for this video was lower than the average for the profile.

Other post by @Mick McCleery