Mick McCleery's video: She s the Messiah in Me 2001 - BILLY FRANKS

THE BACK STORY: It was April of 2001 and I was down in Muskogee, Oklahoma with my new film 'Track 16', for a small but (what would turn out to be) fun film festival. It's called 'The Bare Bones Film Festival' and it's for lower budget films -- and since that is what I make, I've been there three times now. I have been to lots of fests, and while the 'Bare Bones' is far from the biggest, the people who run it have great hearts and are in it for the right reasons -- they simply love films (and even more so, independent films!). Billy had arrived from London to my home in New Jersey a few days earlier and then we had flown down to Tulsa and driven to Muskogee. We met the folks who ran the fest (Oscar and Shiron) as well as another festival attendee (and fellow Northeasterner) Jessica Sharzer. I mention her for two reasons. The first being that shortly after we met her she won an actual Oscar for her short student film 'The Wormhole'. Which is just very cool on her part. And even more importantly (and tied to this story) is that she also ended up lending me her DV camera so we could make this video. "Silly girl!" Some of you might say (after all, this is towards the start of DV tape/cameras -- they were not cheap!) But, I guess she felt 'trusting' enough to hand over her camera to two dudes she had never met because by the time we had gotten to the fest, she had been there a few days and was going a bit 'stir crazy' in Muskogee (in the early days of the fest they hadn't worked out the whole 'have a party each night thing'). I had booked Billy a gig for our first night (using the internet) in a bar nearby. We asked her if she would like to come along, she did and we drove to this totally scary looking bar that was being held up by some rope and a telephone pole (at least that's what it looked like when the corner of the bar is 'tied off' to a pole). We entered and introduced ourselves to the owner and notice the bar is populated entirely by 'Cowboys and Indians' (and I mean this literally). We were a bit nervous and made some plans for a quick escape if need be. But, as these things often go. It turned out to be a fun night and everyone was great (it didn't hurt that Bill played all of his songs with a 'country twang'). The next day we set out to shoot a video. Along with Jessica's camera, we had a single 1 hour long mini-dv tape, the rental car, the song on CD and Bill's acoustic guitar. For this video I did have a bit of a real 'concept', that dealt with a story and multiple actors (well, actresses really) so what we were going to shoot on this day was to be just the performance portion of the video. We had stayed out playing pretty late the night before and Billy was looking a bit 'tumbled' for it. But with what the song represented we decided that look would work out well. It also worked with the downtown of Muskogee being kind of run down too. It would be a great looking place to shoot a movie (someday I hope!) TECHNICAL STUFF: I already mentioned that we shot on the borrowed mini-dv camera. It was set for 16:9 (squeezed) so this video was composed for that screen ratio (in fact, as far as I can remember it is the first thing I ever composed for 16:9 rather than 4:3). The town had an interesting 'color palette' that I wanted to take advantage of. I wanted to but the 'back & white' Billy character up against colorful (if run down) backgrounds. We ran around town shooting a bunch of takes with Billy miming to the CD playing on the car's system and just as we were about through the one hour tape. We came upon a church. Or a house. Well, it looked like a church with the cross at the 'steeple' but it turned out to be a house. It looked like a good location for our 'final run'. We knocked on the door and asked if we could shoot there. The owner (I forget his name) agreed and we shot. We started to wrap up as he chatted with us and talked of his musical past. Which led into him describing his 'self decorated' black electric guitar. We showed interest, he went inside and brought it out. We asked if we could use it. He agreed again. And it became I nice center piece to the video I think. Not to mention the fact that we just stumbled upon it. Also, not to mention that I never shot the other 'story elements' for the video so good that we at least have the black guitar part to balance the acoustic stuff. NEW TWISTS: The video is as I cut it back in '05. (Yeah, I know we shot it in 2001. I was hard at work on 'The Altruist' and am often slow anyway!) REFLECTION: I still think it is missing an 'extra element' but I do love the colors and the look of the city. SIDE NOTE: The aforementioned Jessica also went on to direct the lifetime film 'Speak' with Kirsten Stewart, here's a link to that: http://youtu.be/RuA-WMjzEWU And it has Spanish subtitles to boot! Peace, m mccleery