LONDON — Freelance director/producer Jordan Green (jordangreenphoto@gmail.com) recently provided full service production and post on a new video for the UK band Counting Days. The Die Alone track is off the band’s “Liberated Sounds” album and is presented through performance footage shot with dark backgrounds and high-contrast lighting.
Green has a background as a fashion photographer and has worked with each Counting Days band member at some point in the past. He considers them friends, which made for an easy and fun shoot. The Die Alone video was shot in a large, blacked-out warehouse located in East London. Green shot at 4K resolution using a Sony PXW-FS7 — only the second time he’s used the camera. He brushed up on its functions via online tutorials and was very pleased with the FS7’s results. By shooting in 4K, he was able to crop as well as move within the frame. He used three cards for capturing media.
“[Guitarist] Charlie [Wilson] is an old school metal head and wanted performance footage,” recalls Green. “Similar to metal in the ‘80s and ‘90s — Metallica, black & white, dark — on those lines, with clean, blue/white light.”
The video has a strong black & white aesthetic, but a close look reveals the subtle use of color. The cutaway sequence of the string quartet, however, is almost entirely black & white.
Visual effects, such as slow motion photography, were captured in-camera, notes Green, who shot those sequences at 120fps. Green cut the video using Adobe Premiere running on a MacBook Pro with the Retina display. Footage was accessed from a Thunderbolt drive. He cut in 1080 resolution, which was also the final deliverable. Color was adjusted using a curve within Premiere.
The band’s album release got pushed up by a few months, so Green only had two weeks to shoot and edit the project.