7/24/2023
This past weekend we loaded up the car, headed down to Southport, NC, and spent a couple days shooting some video for Vacation Song with Garrick Lane of Table Rock Media. Before heading down, I spent about 5 hours on Google maps scouting out locations to potentially shoot. Let me tell you the life lesson I learned….nothing looks like Google maps says it does. Well, at least not locations that have a growing population. And…is there really any place not being hit by urban sprawl anymore? Either way…we were given some good locations by some locals and were set to start shooting by noon on Saturday.
We started off by getting some shots at a local gelato shop. Then headed to a bike shop to rent some wheels and film cruising on the bikes under some live oak tree tunnels (Garrick showed off his multitasking ability by operating a camera while on a long board!), and then went to get a bite to eat before filming some band performance shots down by the water.
This is where mother nature threatened to shut it down. While we were sitting in the little restaurant on the pier, the skies quickly started to darken and the coast guard came rolling up telling the place to hunker down as things were about to get serious. And, sure enough, within minutes, the bottom dropped out of the sky and the place was quickly filled with pedestrians running inside in order to avoid the stormy wrath. BUT! As is typically the case at the beach, within an hour things started to clear up, the skies turned a few shades of awesome, and the game was back on!
Filming the band stuff was just such a blast. I found a local drummer from Wilmington (James Tomlinson) to bring out a minimalist kit for the shoot and then my friends Leigh Ann and Michael Gruver rocked on the bass and guitar, respectively.
The next day we headed to the beach at sunrise in order to get some beach walking shots. This is where I learned that YouTube lets you play videos at quicker speeds. Seriously. Go to YouTube, look up your favorite song, and then hit the little gear icon and then change the speed of the song to 1.5. Now sing along. I'll give you a whole dollar if you can accurately sing along to REM's End of the World as We Know It at 1.5 speed.
Once that piece was done we went to pick up The Thing. What is The Thing, you ask? It is a 1973 Volkswagen Thing! Curtis of the Cape Fear Cruisers was kind enough to lend this amazing vehicle. I felt like I was on some kind of safari in some kind of classic film for some kind of adventure. It was some kind of good time!
I'm expecting to be able to share the video with everyone within the next couple of weeks and am pretty excited about it! I'll be sharing it to the socials as soon as I can. Until then, MTFBWY. :D