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Mick McCleery's video: Ain t That Just Like An Angel 1993 - THE REBEL ANGELS

@Ain't That Just Like An Angel? (1993) - THE REBEL ANGELS
THE BACK STORY: It was the Summer of 1993 and my friends John Innocenzo and Brett Heniss and myself headed to the UK for a vacation and to touch base with Billy and his new new band, 'The Rebel Angels'. While out there the plan was to shoot a video for their latest song, 'Ain't That Just Like An Angel?' at a heli-port on the Thames. TECHNICAL STUFF: Back in '93 the best camera I had was a Hi-8 video camera. I also had my old Super-8 film camera. Just before I had flew out I found a stock of old unexposed Super-8 film on the discount rack at 'Caldor'. The film was long since out of date (by at least two years) but it was a bargain at $3 a fifty foot roll (it normally cost about $10 at that time). The old film could have come back blank, but I figured I would 'back up' on the Hi-8 video for safety. The band set up on the heli-pad, Johnny manned the Hi-8 camera, I shot the film camera and Brett handled the 'playback' of the song so the guys could mime to it. We had only rented it for an hour and I only had about 45 minutes of film, so we ran through the song about ten times and just got plenty of 'coverage'. Once home I got the film developed and transferred to Betacam SP (as well as a VHS time code burn copy) and cut together an offline version of the video on my SVHS machines. The toughest thing being that the Super 8 footage had no sound, it also ran out of sync quickly as the speed was not perfect to the speed of the shoot. It had to be visually synced the old school way (ie: watching their lips move). Tough stuff, made tougher by this; those old fifty foot reels only lasted 3 and half minutes. I decided I would just let the song run and switch as quickly as I could when a reel would end (the Hi-8 camera would keep running). In hindsight, I should have numbered these reels as they left the camera so that when they were developed they would be in order (I didn't and they were not). One lives and learns. Eventually, I got all of the sync worked out, made my offline edit. Hand wrote an edit decision list (EDL) and then took in to B-Video in NYC where my friend Kevin Lindenmuth helped me online edit it in their nice Betacam suite (the old days of offline and then online tape editing -- you are not missed!). NEW TWISTS: I have probably 'tinkered' with this video more than any others (probably means I was not happy with it). To talk about the new twists, let's go back to the 1993 edit (I'm guessing that anyone who has read this far has at least taken some interest in this techno mumbo jumbo), the original video cut on betacam and in it's 4 by 3 format and with the video and film 'looks' (both black & white and color) can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXoGdXtt06c Just for fun, here is the same '93 version but adjusted for 16:9 widescreen ratio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sawDUezEsU0 In 2000, I re-edited the video from the '93 master. I kept much of it but cleaned up shots I did not like, I also decided to ditch the video footage (just thought it looked too 'VIDEO') and used a 'film look' process to effect the video to look more like film (there is no hiding that high speed shutter though!) So, it is made up of four 'looks'; color film, black & white film, black & white 'film look' video and sepia 'film look' video. This version (in 16 by 9 screen ratio) can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAcdkdKi3NM I think I know why I used the sepia look back then - because I didn't want the B&W processed video to be adjacent to the real B&W film. But, to me now, it just looks like a bad(ish) video effect. A lesson learned, as much as I know not to be 'taken in' by effects, sometimes I still am. So, the video you are looking at right now is, as far as I'm concerned, the version that should be considered 'the video'. It is essentially the 2000 edit that has been 'panned and scanned' for 16:9 and the sepia switched to B&W. REFLECTION: Back then, shutter speed it what I was toying with. The Hi-8 shot in high speed shutter (1/10,000 of a second) while the Super 8 has a slow shutter (1/18 of a second). I though the difference in the two would provide for a very cool look. And I guess it did. But really, the film just looked better. If I could have, I probably would have used only the film takes. But the light on the day we shot jumped from bright sunlight to total overcast, much of the 45 minutes of film was overcast and too dark to use. Actually, I'm now thinking to use a new go back to the source footage and use a new color 'film look'. (maybe...) I also, learned a valuable shooting lesson on this video. Even though we ran two cameras for ten takes each. I did not have one 'above average' shot of the opening line of the song. You can get a way with missing any other lyric, but generally (in a performance video) you want a clean take of that first line (but somehow by bad luck, we missed it). I am always sure to get that now. thanks, m mccleery

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This video was published on 2011-10-04 09:29:19 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 7 Likes which are lower 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.

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