THOUGHTS ON AN "EARWIGS" VIDEO...

A music video of “Earwigs in the Eggplant”? Why not?

I am good at assembling resources (one of my city-manager skills), and I can script (three plays now, with the sock-puppet cast, and a couple decent music videos); I have the equipment and (I think) the expertise to do both video and still photography. So how would I do this one?

Photos, maybe, of all the plants—and pests—mentioned in the song. Getting real-life photos of all the plants listed in the song is probably not possible—nectarines, for instance, are not a naturally-occurring life form on the North Oregon Coast. I bet I can get seed packets for nearly all the plants, though, and scan those. The local Extension Service might have a poster with photos of the pests that I can similarly crop and title. I wonder if they have photos of the damage these pests do? That could be fun to include—maybe even better than the pests themselves. I have seen all this stuff online, but I can’t use photos from the Internet; the resolution just isn’t good enough—they come out “pixillated.”

The veggies and pests aren’t all we’ve got to deal with in the song, though: there are a couple of lines in the second verse that don’t mention veggies or pests at all, there’s the instrumental break, and there’s the “earwigs in the eggplant” line at the end of every “A” and “B” part. Those all have to be accommodated, too.

Could I use an actor? There’s Dale, our master gardener at the Arts Center; if the weather’s good (and even if it’s not), he’ll be out toiling in the half-block community garden, and I could get footage and photos of him doing stuff, both in the field and at the greenhouse. Since some of the field hasn’t been planted yet, shots of those parts would work for the “they ate everything” lines in the song.

In the instrumental break, I want footage of the fiddle player; I can manage this by recording the fiddle player separately, and filming her as she plays. I could film parts of a guitar solo, too, done either by me (with someone else doing the shooting) or someone else (in which case I could film them). Might have the opportunity to do that sometime during the next couple of weeks. First step, though, is to record a “base” track of the song—rhythm guitar, vocal, and maybe bass—for everybody to listen to and work from.

I could mix the footage of the soloist(s) with “B-roll” of (say) crop damage. The video could use still shots, too, of (1) someone’s vineyard, (2) a big plot of dahlias, and (3) a big plot of tulips. I wonder if anyone around here raises those things?

Is this video a commercially viable thing? Doubtful; I don’t have access to any commercial sources. It’s just a learning experience, I think—striving to master video so I can do it as quickly and competently as I can audio. (However, if done competently enough, it might be a good come-on for The Impromptus’ gig at the Farmer’s Market in August.)

More video thoughts: Bay City Arts Center has another open mike coming up May 7, and it will be filmed; I’ve urged blues-singer Candice to come, and suggested we might do something together. I have figured out how to extract pieces out of video footage, so I could make a “live performance” DVD of her (or us)—with good equipment, and a good camera operator (not me).

And with the Deathgrass rendition of “The Dog’s Song” in hand, I am ready—finally—to do the video of that song. I need about five minutes’ footage of a hyperactive kitten doing Hyperactive Kitten Things. Most of the people I talked to months ago about this no longer have kittens—they now have cats. Maybe I need to advertise.

Music Thursday (Wheeler), Saturday (Library), and Sunday (Nehalem). Last weekend of the play coming up—it’s been a big time-consumer, but definitely worth it. We’ve been playing to mostly packed houses.

Joe