music video, 4K, VFXChris MorganMay 11, 2019

PETE MULLER - ALIVE IN ME

music video, 4K, VFXChris MorganMay 11, 2019

in 2019, i directed four-ish music videos for Pete Muller, a singer / songwriter / mathematician & all-around renaissance guy

‘alive in me’ was the 2nd video conceived for Pete’s 2018 LP DISSOLVE. the song is quite personal and delicate, being a rather touching tribute to Pete’s late mother. the song reminisces about moments and memories, and the concept for the video was that as Pete flipped through what we are led to assume are photos of his mother, we see a young representation of his mother (portrayed by Jerin Forgie) following through those memories in a sort of shared experience. as pete tosses the photos aside wistfully, we see them appear and disappear to the representation of his mother.

the location was an amazing santa barbara property that was under repair, exposing the rough brickwork below the plaster. the entire video is lit with a couple of ARRI tungsten fixtures, with the exception of the daylight shots of Jerin.

the original plan for this video was to shoot Pete’s portions after the sun had set. this was meant to give some division to the two perspectives. this was all changed, however, when during the setup for Pete’s performance, a rainbow appeared directly behind the chair we had set up for the shoot.

the best shot we ended up getting of a particularly unexpected moment.

we were quite a bit ahead of schedule, but we rushed hair and makeup a bit and got Pete to set early to try to take advantage of the rainbow, but as we were largely set up for a night shoot, i never quite captured the rainbow on the RED.

so the early start ended up causing the footage we captured of Pete’s performances to go from fairly well-lit, to sunset, to dusk. this proved a little bit tricky in the edit, but there ends up being a narrative arc to the change in lighting that i think supports the video quite well.

the whole video was shot over a few hours on the RED EPIC at 5K (thanks to AC Drasko Vucevic and producer Dana Gabrion). we used a rented DJI RONIN MX for the gimbal shots, but the EPIC proved a bit of a beast to balance in this configuration.

i also made use of the KesslerCrane for the first time in a while, primarily for the shots of Pete’s performance.

chris morgan setting up the kessler crane.

postproduction on the video took a few weeks. i finished the entire project in Blackmagic Davinci Resolve, using the integrated Fusion node-based compositing software to do all of the visual FX. Pete provided a collection of photos, so everything we see on the walls throughout are authentic shots of Pete and his family. Fusion’s integration into Resolve is pretty fantastic, and allowed me to keep eveyrthing totally procedural throughout, so creative changes could be implemented without having to regenerate chains of assets..

node tree for one of the ‘alive in me’ VFX shots, pre-rotoscope.

the video debuted over Mothers’ Day weekend, and i think it’s a pretty touching tribute to Pete’s mom. this particular project got me quite comfortable completing projects entirely inside of Resolve, with the colour-correction features allowing me to get a great filmic look from what was captured.