-Here are some BTS pics of CAROLINE BLUE filming their music videos! First we start of with a list / link to all the albums included- which are all on the CAROLINE BLUE FACEBOOK PAGE . Then we go to each one-which has a small recap from WWJ.
-6/16/2011-DEAD OR ALIVE VIDEO SHOOT
-3/21-11/14/2010-IVE SEEN THE LIGHT TONIGHT VIDEO SHOOT
-3/15-5/30-6/27/2010-STAY VIDEO SHOOT
-2/22/2010-PAIN VIDEO SHOOT
-6/14/2003-MINE, MINE, MINE VIDEO SHOOT
-JUNE 16, 2011-“DEAD OR ALIVE”
6/16/2011-Here are some pics just taken earlier tonight from shooting a music video for the song “Dead or Alive.” Joining me are Rocky Graziano on bass and Erik Strail on drums. I had a basic concept for this one, but producer Ron Bonk came up with another and I went with it. The pics don’t show the zaniness that happened here-maybe the last 4 shots-but there was basically a “serious” take and a “goofy” take with everything-which should make for an interesting video!
-Big thanks to Rocky & Erik for traveling all the way to Syracuse for this and doing a great job. Big thanks to Ron to for all that he did-this was one of our quicker shoots. I did get a tad injured here. I didn’t really feel it at the time-but my forearm & knee are aching now. Oh well-I’m sure the reason that happened looked great on film. Got another one in the can baby! (Woo Hoo!) 🙂
-MARCH 21 & NOVEMBER 14, 2010-“I’VE SEEN THE LIGHT TONIGHT”
-Here’s pics taken during 2 separate shoots for the “I’ve Seen the Light” video shoot.Both were done at Strangeland Audio Studios in Phoenix, NY. This is kind of a Flashback video to when the Not For The Innocent CD was being recorded back in 2007. Well, not an exact backtrack 🙂
-The 1st session was done the day right after CAROLINE BLUE had performed at Fusions in -Syracuse, NY. The band was a little beat from the night before. This was mostly performance syncing with each band member having one scene to speak a line. I (WWJ) came up with the script for this one. Film Producer Ron Bonk was again used in the filming of all this.
-This session went OK.It took a little longer than anticipated. I was personally drained & worn out-not just from the show but due to several events that had happened previously. This shoot was OK-more somber with some tension thrown in. Things would start to change heavily for the band 11 days from this shoot in large part because of those events-but that story is best told on another day….
-I worked on trying to get the 2nd half of this video done for quite awhile-but there was always a schedule conflict somewhere. Finally I was able to secure people & time. The 2nd shoot was earlier today 11/14/10. This one was all dialogue-with me getting a taste of what it’s like to do a little directing. In addition to Ron filming, we had Scoot Patnode (owner of Strangeland) and Film Maker Brian Hewitt this night. This took 2-3 hours to shoot-and it was a lot of fun. Again, we were going based on my script, but there was some improv…and I have to say this was an awesome night of filming. Everyone did their job well and we were all laughing a lot thru out-which was quite a contrast to the 1st shoot.
-I want to thank Scott, Brian & Ron for all their great work tonight-as well as Doc & Joe during the previous shoot’s work. I believe this will be a fun video to watch when all is said & done. Keep on the look out for it!
-MARCH 15-MAY 30-JUNE 27, 2010-“STAY” (PAID THE ELECTRIC BILL MIX)
-Here’s pics taken from the 3 filming sessions done for the “Stay” Music Video. I was originally going to have this one done towards the end of the group of music videos we’re doing, but things change so you have to go with it. Once again I teamed up w/ Ron Bonk from SRS Cinema-he made our last video “Pain” and will be on board for several more videos currently in pre-production. Also in this video is my girlfriend Jennifer Gall.
-The story line basically goes like this. I’m outside wandering around-lost in thought about a past love. Suddenly, it’s like I see her all around me, yet whenever I get closer, she’s gone. I keep wandering till I get to a place-her place. I look inside & see her & I smile. That quickly fades when her new love enters the room. I’m crushed and walk away.
-The 1st shoot took place on Monday 3/15/2010 in an area behind Patty Trombino ‘s place. Originally I’d envisioned snow on the ground when coming up w/ this video and a week before the shoot it was still snowing off & on. Various reasons for delay prevented shooting earlier in the year. But that weekend before the shoot, the weather started to warm up rapidly-to the point that, on Monday, most of the snow that was around had melted. The area we shot the video looked kinda like a dead forest so we worked with what we had.
-For the most part, things ran smoothly-at least till the end. One funny moment-which did get caught on Ron’s camera-was when I was walking towards Jen and I tripped & fell! We’ll have to get that on a blooper reel or something. At the end, part of the story involved a photo catching on fire. I didn’t have any lighter fluid so I brought rubbing alcohol-which didn’t help much. I don’t know how many attempts were made to set them on fire. Good thing I brought a lot of extra pics! As you can see from the pics, I did have some fun moments while Jen was trying to light the photo on fire (HA!).
-Probably the most memorable part of the shoot was walking around in the mud-our boots were soaked! I still have residue mud on my boots. We were actually going to shoot a lot more than we did, but we ran out of time.
-The 2nd shoot was done on Sunday 5/30/2010 (see how long these can take?) Scheduling & stuff you know….This was at Ron’s place. This was the part where I see Jen with her new guy. An interesting twist is that the new guy is a more “domesticated” version of me! It’s actually something I’ve had an issue with in the past w/ certain people-almost like a “domesticated WWJ” vs. the “rocker WWJ.” thing. Just a little bit of symbolism in there…..
-This went by fairly quickly. BTW-the book Jen is reading is the Karma Sutra (Woo Hoo-HA!). Ron’s puppies were a surprise addition in the shoot. Course, to have continuity, I had to wear a heavy leather jacket and a hoody like in the last shoot-only this was now the end of May. It wasn’t as hot as I’d anticipated. Like a knucklehead, I forgot to bring my jacket so I had to borrow Ron’s. I got to do some acting with the faces I made & I hope I pulled it off.
-The 3rd shoot took place on Sunday 6/27/10 in a park at 7 AM. That’s right-7 AM. This was more just some filler scenes and things went by pretty quick. Both me & Ron commented that we have a lot of footage for a 3 minute song. We might have to make a couple of different versions of it 🙂
-No real complications here-except that at times it was hard to hear the boom box and I got 4 mosquito bites-including one on my forehead while we were still filming! Nice huh?
-So the filming is done and now comes the editing. Once that’s done and paid off, we’ll show it off. Big thanks to Patty Trombino for letting us film in her back yard; to Ron Bonk for all his work & expertise and to Jennifer Gall for her patience & performance in all this.
-2/22/2010-“PAIN”
-Pics of CAROLINE BLUE filming a music video for the song “Pain” @ The Gear Factory in Syracuse, NY on Monday 2/22/2010.
-It’s been awhile since CAROLINE BLUE did a video shoot. I believe the last one was with the song “Slave to the Hourglass” in 2006. I love being in music videos-not only for the obvious promotional reasons in helping a band, but also the creative side. Since Doc & Joe had never done a music video before and this was the 1st time we-as a unit-worked with producer Ron Bonk, I kept things pretty simple. Only a few scenes and even they weren’t that hard.
-I 1st met Ron when he was doing a video shoot for the band Zadoc…& The Nightmare. I was impressed w/ his work on their video “Bathory’s Web.” We used to have UVTV shoot our videos but they’ve moved to another state years ago. I next came in contact w/ Ron last year when he was auditioning for his new movie “Ms. Cannibal Holocaust” (which I have a small role in). We talked on & off from time to time about him shooting some music videos for CAROLINE BLUE and finally, in 2010, the ball got rolling & here we are!
-This was for the song “Pain” which is on the CAROLINE BLUE CD “Not For The Innocent.” I’ve had the guidelines for this video (and several others actually) floating in my head for a few years now. I’d even discussed it w/ Rich from UVTV when they were still in NY state. The video was shot on Monday 2/22/2010 @ The Gear Factory in Syracuse, NY. I’d met with it’s owner-Richard Destito-a month earlier and felt this was the right place to help turn my guidelines into reality.
-It took just under 4 hours to get all the shooting done. Ron had brought some extra lights in-which helped a lot. I had Joe bring his lap top & surround sound speakers for play back. This was a lip-synch video-which gives things a more pro look & sound. Doc had brought some mic stands to make things look more “real” (like we were actually playing), but I scrapped that pretty quick. Take a look at our ‘Slave to the Hourglass” and/or “Mine, Mine, Mine” lip synch vids. It’s pretty obvious very quickly that we’re lip syncing-which is fine w/ me. A big thing w/ me in regards to music videos is expression & creativity. We didn’t do too much on the creative side, per say, on this, but I believe there’s loads of expression in this one.
-Unfortunately, Doc slipped on some ice before things started and hurt his ankle pretty badly. It was also pretty cold in here. I remember seeing Joe standing near the lights a lot for warmth. Ron was very patient w/ us and it was great working w/ him. He even showed us some of the playback of what he filmed. I think he got some really great angles. I had my camcorder off to the side running-hence where a good chunk of the pics came from. I will say though that there’s going to be a lot more camera work involved that what those pics suggest.
-There was a possibility of a girl being involved in this shoot via our management GIO Entertainment, but things fell thru at the last minute & they couldn’t make it so we just carried on.
-We then went to a Chinese Restaurant to eat & talk over stuff. Joe had 2 1/2 plates and I barely had 1 (have to keep the girlish figure you know-HA!). Doc had 4-5 plates. He said “these places never make their money off of me.” 🙂
-So now starts the editing-which wil be done by Ron. We’re all very anxious to see the final results. As soon as we get a copy, we’ll let everyone where they can go to see it. Hope you all enjoy the pics and keep checking back for more updates!
-JUNE 14,2003-“MINE, MINE, MINE”
-On May 28th,2003 The film crew from UMTV (Rich Stahle,Jerimi & Gilbert) set off to the KISS Barn in Fulton to attempt to film the video for “Mine, Mine, Mine” from CAROLINE BLUE. This was actually the THIRD attempt at making this video.
-We actually filmed a live video of the song from a show we did at a place called Angels out in Oneida on January 25th,2003. Rich had the vid done in a week and we were all excited about it-till we saw it. Visually it’s ok, but sonically it was horrible. The drums sounded like cardboard boxes and, during the solo, the bass was almost nonexistant. In addition, my guitar tone wasn’t great and during the chorus’, the vocal jumped out and hit you in the head like a hammer! So, the video was scrapped.
-The 2nd attempt was actually on June 14th, 2003-the day after our show at Mr.C’s. We were going to lip-synch the song to our demo from the studio-basically like the standard way videos are done. Rich had stressed to me the importance of the area being well-lit so I rented out some stage lights from a friend of mine. The problem was,those lights-combined with Rich’s construction lights-blew out the power! Since no one knew how to get it back on at the time, we reschedualled the shoot.
-That leads us to the 3rd time. We got the shoot done, but it was a hellacious task doing so. First of all, it was very hot that day-and being on the 2nd floor and running around in a room with basically no ventilation just rose the temperature even higher. Then things were running late cause a certain band member showed up 2 hours late. The stage lights weren’t there ,but even with just Rich’s lights, we still blew the power! We actually had to run some 100 ft. extension cords over to the house next door to power everything. So that took awhile to get going. If only things ended there…
-Then we had to find a good stable place for the CD player cause as soon as me or Ham jumped in the air and came down, the CD player would skip! Ham loaned me his original 1978 Paul Stanley Ibanez Iceman guitar for the shoot. Beautiful guitar. There were 4 takes all together. Right at the beginning of the 2nd take, the screw for the strap ripped out-you should’ve seen the look on Ham’s face! Luckily I had my Ibanez RG-570 there as backup. Then towards the end of the 3rd take, Ham rips out his strap lock as well! By this time, tempers were starting to flare but we finally got thru it all. Even though filming this vid was a pain, it was worth it cause I believe the results speak for themselves.
CAROLINE BLUE 