Mazda Miata and Clinical Depression by Scarlet Street | Music Video

About 48 hours before we shot this music video, I managed to slip my patella and strain a bunch of ligaments in my knee. Both myself and Holden, as well as the boys at Scarlet Street talked. Should we still make this shoot happen? What if I tore my ACL and need surgery? When would we be able to rescheudlein it.

Even though I had one leg, at least the video’s concept was about the van. We had some performing shots tht Holden operated. But outside of that most things were either on a tripod, or mounted to a van. So we decided to go through with the shoot. The band was about to go on tour, we had promo material planned, and frankly we didn’t know when we’d be able to shoot again if I needed to spend 9 months dealing with torn shit in my knee.

Thankfully we went forward with the shoot and the videdo turned out awesome. Also thankfully, I managed not to tear anything in my knee and was just able to rehab it back to proper function.

My Approach To Color Grading This Music Video

I wanted to go with a look that really emphasized the red and maroon in the van’s interior. I ended up going with a nice blue and red look that helped to pull the most from our van interior shots.

For the performing shots, I added some soft grain up in the top end, as well as some halation. I wanted the highlights to have as much texture as possible to take away from the fact that there ultimately isn’t that much detail in them. Since we didn’t have a lot of dynamic lighting, I had to do something with the highlights to help it compensate for the look and feel feel.

I wanted to make sure the windows didn’t take away from the shot, but I also didn’t want to force the shot to be something that It wasn’t. If you try and force the rest of the scene to compete with the window, either you’re going to just absolutely crush the highlights, or bring the midtones and shadows up so much you’re fucking them up. So I had to strike a balance. A soft flow and some texture helped make the highlights feel deeper. And bringing the midtones up a bit helped to open up the image. But I made the point not not fight the highlights too hard where they were.

I also wanted to do the red push to really emphasize the murder theme. But I wanted the reds in the van and skintones to really be the only reds in the palette. symbolizing the van’s connection to the band themselves. I made sure to saturate and push the reds, but also pull down other parts of the image as well to make sure we could maximize the contrast around the reds.

For the van sale and murder scene, we wanted them to stand out as a separate scene but still be cohesive with the rest of the video. I pushed the shots heavier into the blue and green region, almost giving it a Fight Club look in a few shots. In order to really drive the point home and connect the opening scenes with the latter murder sequence, we used a different aspect ratio and went heavier on film textures.