Director Justin Reich continues his work with Black Label Society, this time producing and editing a new music video for the hard rock band’s A Love Unreal track. The video takes a light-hearted look at the life of the Grim Reaper, who goes about his day as a landscaper, and then does his shopping and laundry before shooting some pool and signing karaoke.
Hope Jordan plays Cindy, the reaper’s love interest, who he keeps running into around the small town. Tina Reynolds plays the karaoke girl and also served as a production assistant on the project, which was shot by cinematographer Jonathan Pfundstein. Sony’s fs7 was used to capture 4K imagery, and DP Pfundstein used a Zephyr Steadicam for stability during production.
“Very little lighting was brought in to the shoot,” explains director Justin Reich, adding that footage was captured in Sony's sLog3Cine. “We utilized mostly practical and natural light, bringing in bounce or negative fill when needed. When a light was used, it was either an Apurture HR 682 LED panel or an Apurture LS C120.”
Having battery powered LEDs and bounce cards on standby made the shoot very mobile, notes Reich, adding that the video was produced in just two days.
Reich edited the piece in just one day using Adobe Premiere Pro CC. He also applied a number of looks and LUTs using a combination of the Lumetri color panel and downloads from Color Grading Central.
“[It was] a really tight deadline of one day to edit, grade and upload,” he recalls. “It was a little crazy, but I was able to pull it off!”
Barry Davis and Rusty Davis with Spotlight Express LLC helped with the special effects.