THE MAKING OF THE "RUFUS" VIDEO...

The music video of “Me and Rufus, and Burning Down the House” is finished, and uploaded to YouTube. Link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp2G7K8znZ8. The video footage was shot last Sunday at Sara’s house, and is of Rufus the English bulldog doing Dog Things out in the yard; I matched that up with the soundtrack, and used still photos with text overlays during the Rap. It came out kinda cute. I doubt I’d change anything, though there are things I’d do differently next time around.

What did I learn? First, my little digital camera doesn’t “do” zoom very well. Closeups get fuzzy, and look amateurish. I should not try to do closeup filming in the future. The standard lens setting produces pretty sharp images, and it’d be best to keep it that way.

Second, the “video” setting on the camera generates an audio track (or at least Windows Movie Maker thinks it does—there’s actually nothing there). That with-the-video audio track interferes with any audio track I import, and distorts it something awful. But if I mute the with-the-video audio track, it’s okay—even though the with-the-video audio track doesn’t actually exist.

Third, the camera can only shoot about a minute’s worth of “film” before it has to shut down and save what it did. That makes videoing me playing (which I’d like to do next time) a little problematic, because it could not be done all in one shot. I had originally envisioned filming me from start to finish playing rhythm guitar, and then splicing in pieces—me playing lead, just plain singing, footage of other things, and so on. If I have to work in one-minute increments, it’s still possible, but it’s more work. I have talked to daughter Kimberly about using her camera, which is a lot better (and three years newer) and has a lot more memory.

So we want to do it again, with another song. What I want to do next time is film an entire song’s worth of me playing rhythm guitar—ideally, I’m somewhere where the song can be played through speakers, but otherwise, I can use a portable CD player and headphones. The lip (singing) and hand (guitar) movements will be in time with the music, because I will have been listening to the recorded music as I was being filmed. Then, we (I’ll need help—someone else has to run the camera) film some snippets of me playing lead (including closeups—not zoomed—of the hands during the lead break), and maybe singing. And some extraneous footage of vaguely related subjects, and maybe some still photos, too. The snippets, extraneous footage, and stills get inserted at strategic points, replacing parts of the “base” video track. I think it’s possible to do all of that in Windows Movie Maker.

I do have a song in mind—“Milepost 43,” the true story about Al David’s missing underwear. It’s a fairly short song, and the “cast of characters” is pretty simple: I need underwear, a suitcase, and a rest area (got all those), and some roadside signs (the hard one to find may be the “Milepost 43” sign, but there should be one nearby—a lot of state highways start at the Coast, and are measured going inland). I could even incorporate the band, if they were willing—just need to record the song with the band, and then film the band and band members as they were playing along to the recording.

I think I just described something that might take a while to finish. I wonder if I’ve got anything I could do sooner?

AND: A quick musication-and-recording job this morning, of a cute song by Polly Hager, “Cougars & Cub Scouts.” Did it as real fast bluegrass, so it comes in under 3 minutes even with a lead break. I shouldn’t be the one singing—it’s obviously a girl song—but Polly asked me to. I figure I didn’t have a reputation to damage, so I did. Music tonight at City hall, tomorrow at the library.

Joe