I've been doing a lot of work with a local band, A Perfect Failure, and just recently finished working on their cover/parody of the song "I Kissed A Girl" as well as video for the cover. Their version is a lot more metal than the original (distortion, screaming, ect), and the video was extremely goofy, a lot of fun to produce and edit.

To film the video, I tried out something new. I saw an idea on ebay for custom suction-cup camera mounts here: [cgi.ebay.com] After a bit of researching, I found that I could buy the suction mounts for $5 at the local Harbor Freight, add a little bit of rubber, some hose clamps, and a bolt, then just put whatever video head I had lying around onto it. When all is said and done, I have a window/fender/dash camera mount for about $8 + the cost of the pan/tilt or ball head. Since they were so cheap, I decided to make three of them, two two-suction models with ball heads, and another four suction model with a pan/tilt head.

I talked a friend into letting us borrow her convertible, used my two camcorders (canon ZR200 and ZR500) mounted to the car with the suction cups, and had my friends drive around a local parking lot 10 or so times, listening to their cover twice each trip. After that, I had them drive around the parking lot while I followed them with my GL1.

When all the filming was done, I had 24 video feeds to edit. Using Final Cut Pro, I synced all the videos to the studio track and set up multicamera editing. I quickly discovered that my Quad Core Mac Pro couldn't handle 24 video simultaneously.. I had to distribute the videos out across 4 hard drives, and could still only play a few seconds before things started stuttering. Still, after a few days work, I finished the video.

Here's the original video, if you're not familiar:
[www.youtube.com]

And here's A Perfect Failure's cover of Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl
[www.youtube.com]

Yes, they did get pulled over in the parking lot at the very last second of the last take while I was filming with the GL1, it was a perfect ending for the video, so we were pretty thrilled to have gotten that footage.

All in all, this video was a lot of fun to produce and I was really satisfied with the quality of video I got out of the suction mounts. They never came loose during the whole trip, though I did learn that I should have tightened the video head to the bolt a bit better during one take.. If it weren't for the quality of the parking lot/roads nearby, the video would have been much smoother.

Even if you don't like the song, hopefully you can get a laugh out of my friends acting goofy from 24 angles...

Those guys have boyfriends?

Good stuff, well done.

Egad, did you do the editing, too? I am amazed at how film is put together and edited. I'm sure the guys here will love love love this video. But looking at it in a more academic way....I think it is great! congrats.

>>> I quickly discovered that my Quad Core Mac Pro couldn't handle 24 video simultaneously


makes you wonder what in the hell kind of power you'd really need to do the job on the fly.

The song is a word-for-word cover, we considered changing things but figured it'd be funnier if we just left it as-is.

Yes, I did the editing. I had a headache for 3 days while doing it, too. I had to listed to that song over and over for at a minimum of 100 plays. It was stuck in my head like worse than any song before..

It took us about 8 hours to cover the song all together, about 2 hours to film it, and took me around 12 hours to edit the video, most of which was syncing things up and some color correction. I'm still a bit of a rookie at color correcting, and have learned that driving video doesn't make things easier.

We had considered trying to green screen the video, but I think actually driving made it turn out way better than editing in the terrain.

those guys sound like they have some anger issues to work on...

---

Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

Quote
Jimmypoo
>>> I quickly discovered that my Quad Core Mac Pro couldn't handle 24 video simultaneously
makes you wonder what in the hell kind of power you'd really need to do the job on the fly.

I'm pretty sure that if I had a RAID 5 array, an SSD or two, or just spread the videos out across a few Raptors, it would have been fine. The most difficult part was likely getting the drives heads to seek out 24 video streams at once. I had considered buying a few 1TB drives before finishing, but I'd rather hold out for 2TB drives, if they ever show up.

I did a little googling and found a wiki entry on Katy Perry, not as informative as I had hoped.
[en.wikipedia.org]

Congrats on the video editing job, it looks very professional. You are a talented person.

William Shatner: You know, before I answer any more questions there's something I wanted to say. Having received all your letters over the years, and I've spoken to many of you, and some of you have traveled... y'know... hundreds of miles to be here, I'd just like to say... GET A LIFE, will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it's just a TV show! I mean, look at you, look at the way you're dressed! You've turned an enjoyable little job, that I did as a lark for a few years, into a COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME!

[ a crowd of shocked and dismayed Trekkies.... ]

I mean, how old are you people? What have you done with yourselves?

[ to "Ears" ] You, you must be almost 30... have you ever kissed a girl?

[ "Ears" hangs his head ]

I didn't think so! There's a whole world out there! When I was your age, I didn't watch television! I LIVED! So... move out of your parent's basements! And get your own apartments and GROW THE HELL UP! I mean, it's just a TV show dammit, IT'S JUST A TV SHOW!

Charlie: Are- are you saying then that we should pay more attention to the movies?

---

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

Cool idea... Nice job.
I may order one of those mounts, or try to make one like you did. Not sure what I'm going to make with it though.

We're really trying to get as much attention as we can out of the video. So, anyone willing, please digg our video: [digg.com]

Grimmy,

I am sure you have some interesting stories to tell. Much more exciting than my line of work.

---

I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making
him carry me, and yet assure myself and others
that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his
lot by all possible means — except by getting off
his back. - Leo Tolstoy, novelist and Philosopher
(1828-1910)

What lovely singing voices.

Aw man that rocks. You knew which cams to suction cup to the car too. Them boys must eat through lots of throat lozenges.

Quote
beerman
I did a little googling and found a wiki entry on Katy Perry, not as informative as I had hoped.
[en.wikipedia.org]

LOL, someone was really mad, huh?

here is an earlier page:

[en.wikipedia.org]

and here is the current page, since I am sure it will get changed again

[en.wikipedia.org]

Yeah, I have two XL1's and the GL1, but they're way too expensive (and heavy) to be hooking up to a suction cup on a car window. I figured with those little palm-size camcorders, if they flew off and broke into a thousand pieces, I wouldn't be too upset (unless the tape died with them). Just so long as nothing happens to my good cams.

I'm trying to think up new ideas to put those camcorders through hell to get good angles.. if you have any ideas, let me know.. (I was thinking a foot-thick ball of bubble-wrap might make for enough cushion to throw a camera around with...)

I like the ugly guy with the piercing.

Any chance of a photo of the mounts you made?

Grim,

That was awesome. Simply awesome. I think the driver of the car, if that was his real voice, should be signed for some major recording...he's got a great sound (IMO) for lots of work.

I couldn't believe you did that work in a parking lot---hope you had a permit/permission. Did the cops rail on your guys?

At any rate, simply awesome.

BTW- that Katy Perry is hot (never seen her before today0...at least on the outside. Who knows how freaky she is inside?

---

All I ever really needed to know, I learned from watching Star Trek.

Thanks for the support! The driver is Tony and he is the lead singer of the band, that's his real voice, with a little bit of reverb. The singer and backup screams come from the bald guy in the back seat, he was sick when we recorded, so he's usually better, but we weren't trying to make the song perfect, just something quick for fun and attention.

So far, we've gotten 1500 hits for the video. (945 for above, another 200 on a different version, and 355 on myspace) We've also gotten 635 hits to the myspace, so I think we're getting a decent amount of attention.

I'm just trying to figure out ways to get the video seen by more people.. Everyone loves it so far, I'm just not familiar with promoting to people outside Michigan, so I'm not sure where to go.


As for permission, no, we didn't bother. We picked the lease popular stripmall in town and figured we'd film there until someone complained then move on. It just happened that the cops didn't show up for until the very last minute and happened to help us out by being filmed pulling us over. We have an interesting sort of relationship with the police, they never seem to really cause us any major problems.

This picture is from about 2 years ago when they played a 'going away' show outside with one of the original guitarists before he left for the army. The officer showed up just as we were finishing packing up the equipment.

Great Video! However, I'm a bit more interested in these homemade camera mounts.

Did they really work well enough to let you trust strapping a camera to the side of a moving car?

Yeah, the mounts are rated to handle 150lbs, I think the 4-cup version can do 300lbs.

Just like regular suction cups, if you have a dry seal, they might lose suction after a while. When we did the video we sprayed some windex onto the suction cup and smeared it around the edge. During the whole video we never once had a cup come free. We moved the mounts around several times, but there was one that stayed in the same position for almost a whole hour without moving.

I wouldn't put my GL1 on one, but a $75-100 camcorder is cheap enough to risk it. If you're really worried, tie a string around the mount and secure it somewhere. I did that during some of the more dangerous positions, just in case.

They even drove the car at up to 50MPH, of course the video was a bit more shaky then, but no problems. My mounts look almost exactly like the ones on the ebay auction. I even bought one of the heads from the same seller, so it's the same as they used. My other two heads came from Amvona, one that I had removed from one of my own tripods and another I got on ebay for the video. Ball heads are really light and give a great range of movement, so I'd recommend them most.

Aye, nice stuff! I hope that guy's throat doesn't hurt!

I first heard the song performed by Jill Sobule and this is certainly a different take! Nice job Grim!

DM



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2008 07:56PM by dmann.

yea, Jill was the first I knew of for the title.. but diff. lyrics.


For Corvette runs we use these:
[www.stickypod.com]

---

The Band: [www.rhythmandrain.com]

Thanks for everyone's help and support after Hurricane Katrina!

i always enjoy goofy remakes like that.

nice job on the video.

you know they're metal cuz they're all wearing BLACK. ;)


ever hear 1000 mona lisas singing you oughta know?
[www.coversproject.com]

or the number 12 looks like you singing my sharona?
[www.youtube.com]

---

Very nice Grim! Congrats on getting the mounts going.

mostly a ballad band............ huh

---

!#$@@$#!

proofraed by OwEn the c@t.