Turning Music Videos into Works of Art
A group of up-and-coming independent film directors and digital artists is taking the highly competitive entertainment industry by storm – they are creating visual styles and cinematography never seen before, which they proudly call their own.
One such leader is Houston-based Taylor Gahm, an independent film director, director of photography and video editor all rolled into one. His multiple roles have been made possible by incorporating Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink cards into his workflow. He is now a much sought after award winning director, cinematographer and video editor among the US independent record label companies. This is no mean feat for someone who started as a rookie less than three years ago with no knowledge and training in the field.
Gahm’s creative flair and artistic eye for detail certainly gave him a headstart. Thanks to the DeckLink cards, he has been able to push the boundaries of creativity, imposing his own trademark style on the music videos he produces.
The days of hiring a video editor and communicating his ideas about what he wanted during the offline edit are now over, all thanks to his DeckLink cards. Before long, Gahm had his own editing suite and had taken on the role of video editor. That has given him complete control over the entire creative process, from ‘pre’ to post production. Most of all, he now has greater control over the budgets for whatever jobs he undertakes.
“I was having to hire a post house to do uncompressed video editing on Avid Symphony. That cost me a lot of money and because of that, I didn’t make much money out of the music videos I did in the early days,” Gahm recalled.
Gahm relishes the idea of having the DeckLink cards as part of his workflow as he is now hands-on at the post production stage, which greatly enhances his creative freedom. “The DeckLink cards let me produce high resolution, broadcast quality work in a cost- effective manner. They help me to maintain a streamlined and efficient workflow and they allow uncompressed capture which, in turn, holds a better color correction,” he said.
“I was used to the old school FireWire approach and I thought the DV codec could only be so good,but I was wrong. The uncompressed codec Blackmagic Designinvented is incredible,” Gahm added.
Art, Awards, Technology
Gahm’s tool set includes Adobe After Effects, Automatic Duck, Blackmagic Design, Canon cameras, Manfrotto and Red Giant’s Magic Bullet, all of which make his music videos come together as ‘works of art’. His unique creative flair earned him recognition at the 2003 Aegis Awards at which he won an award for Mission X Television, while his short film Hope Has Come was one of the finalists.
Although Gahm was quick to pick up the technology, he concedes that he has always been driven more by art, with the aid of technology to give him the creative-edge. “When I was first introduced to the [broadcast and production] technology, I was trying to figure out why the music videos on MTV looked so cool and the images looked so rich. I then started to think about what I could do with the cameras,” he said.
His fascination with cameras led to innovative ways of doing things. Before 24p cameras were available, Red Giant’s Magic Bullet allowed him to convert images from 30i to 24p in post production. “That was one thing that allowed me to get ahead of the game at that point,” he recalled.
Gahm’s first break into the entertainment industry came when he was asked to shoot a music video for an unsigned local band - Inhabited. ”Thanks to the music video and Inhabited’s great music, the band secured a record deal! The rest, as they say, is history.”
Accolades from the rock band community continued, with word-of-mouth proving to be the most effective form of marketing. Gahm is now working with three popular rock band groups in the US: Project 86, He is Legend, and Dead Poetic.
One of Gahm’s big breaks came when the four music videos he did for Selectric Records played a part in helping the company secure a national distribution deal with Sony. The distribution deal was a major achievement for Selectric Records, which, until then, had been distributing through reputable but smaller outlets.
In True Taylor Gahm Style
Gahm’s music videos, well known for their edgy and grungy qualities, have catapulted him from obscurity to fame overnight. He now has a fan site where fans talk about his music videos and distinctive creative style.
He admits that he enjoys a darker feel to his work, which often features a high contrast look. “If I were a painter, I would probably paint on black canvas instead of white.” he explained, “I think there is a much to say from what you don’t see sometimes.”
His affinity for dark images was well portrayed in the first music videos he put together for one of Selectric Records’ rock bands, Homeless J, for the music video, The Flash. The music video is one of a redeeming story; it is abstract and the concept is based lightly on Dante’s Inferno.
Gothic and mysticism featured strongly in the music video with a lot of visual metaphors having been used.The Flash included a dove and a snake, symbolizing good and evil; a woman in the video represents Beatrice; a mysterious dark figure in a purple cloak is the antagonist, and the lead singer doubles as the protagonist as he struggles his way through the video.
“There was some intense color correction on the video. I onlined it at 10 bit uncompressed using Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink cards,” said Gahm. “My goal was to use color and tone to aid the telling of the story through abstract imagery. The color correction was vital to the video and I could not have pushed it as hard without the DeckLink card.”
The unmistakable signature style of Gahm is often one where the images involve raw camera moves, with lots of motion and high-pace cuts that result in sensory overload. “I like to have a lot of fast cuts and fast actions so that you can’t take it all in [the images] at first. I want the audience to have to watch the video a few times. I also like vivid images, a lot of texture and contrast and richness in color,” he said.
Color correction, he said, is key as it helps to set mood and evoke emotion. “It [colour correction] has significant impact on perception and mood. It’s like the icing on a cake, you add color to the scene. Without good color correction on any project, you can blow the whole project even with quality story, cinematography and editing in place.”
Gahm’s strong color sense and his penchant for color correction cannot be undermined. He stresses the importance of color right from the time of shoot and not something to be dealt with only in post production. His early experience in working with DV saw major pixelising during colour correction. Fortunately, he no longer encounters this problem as the DeckLink cards’ uncompressed 10 bit feature allows color correction to hold without “bleeding” or pixelising.
In one of the music videos he produced, for an unsigned rock band called Nothing More, for the song Watch and Learn, Gahm uses color correction to his advantage. He created a very grungy and sweaty look in a scene set in a warehouse. The rich images, coupled with the loud music, “communicated” even the temperature of the warehouse to the audience, as if they were there, making them exhausted just by looking at the images.
Challenges
Challenges will always remain in producing music videos for independent record labels. Their budgets, limited compared to major labels, means that independent directors like Gahm have to continuously push the limits on creativity to come up with industry standerd music videos at an affordable price. But these challenges also translate to opportunities to work with some very talented people in the rock music industry, and “forces you to squeeze creativity out of every penny” Gahm stated. “My hope is that the major labels will start to see my work and realize that if I can produce great work on such small budgets, I will certainly be able to deliver on a larger one.”
On the Cards
Gahm is in the process of putting together a director’s show reel and a DOP reel for some representation companies and agents that are in the process of helping him clinch high-end jobs. Going forward, he hopes to have the opportunity to shoot TV commercials for high-profile bands. And like any aspiring directors, directing feature films is his ultimate goal.
