teetoo & elaine :: Charmed Life

haha. Finally finished the video for me n my laling. It was envisaged some time back in the start of the year, but didn’t have time or the “right” equipment to do something which I thought would be simple yet a bit different from the usual “clean” couple videos around the net. I wanted a more “blurry” feel. Again, I have this penchant for photography or video that is not in focus… because life is never a straight or clear line anyway. The first plan was to self-shoot with a borrowed Nikon D90, after it was launched.. then again, I’m afraid of losing it because I was planning on shooting more with a tripod, and maybe some hand-held. I was also afraid after setting up the camera my tripod and I start running a million miles away for a scene, some thief might come in a motorbike and swoop both the borrowed camera and my tripod. no way. so video plan = shelved.

Then came the little lomo digital camera, Harinezumi, which was light, no need to focus, “cheap” (compared to a Nikon D90), my girlfriend can handle it and most important, I wouldn’t need super After Effects effects to get the “lomo” feel I craved. I had drawn a couple of scenes before hand, first to the music of Lenka’s “The Show”, then changed to Plain White T’s “1,2,3,4” then again finalised finally to Leigh Nash’s amazing bubbly “Charmed Life”. The scenes that I doodled was thrown out the window, literally into recycle bins, after “principal shooting” (big word) started. What you see in the video is totally unscripted-on-the-fly shooting. The locations were set, it was the challenge of how to make the location work to the music and to show what we are in real life. I was humming “la la laaa laaa, la la la la” throughout the shooting to get to the beat. haha.

To be really honest, I love this video making so much. We worked together, thought of stuff to do together and enjoyed it together. Most important, it was unpretentious and it showed the things we really loved and loved to do. Blue skies, rolling clouds, grass, coffee, Stitch, Chipmunks, slumbering, my fav pillow, slippers, my 15-year green car, making fool of ourselves in public and basically, the simple life. The baseball kids in the fields were wondering “what these 2 old fools doing running around in circles… a couple of times”. Got a few drivers smiling as we walked like marching penguins in a public road. Even the dogs were wondering what was happening…….

I hope you guys like this video as we truly truly truly enjoyed making it soooo much.
All shots were made using the Digital Harinezumi.

(pause the video first for slower-lines esp. the self-claimed “fast” lines called Streamyx)
the cover shot below was shot at 7.00pm when sun was dropping in front of us
a SB600 fired at 1/64 behind and on top of us. self timer camera on tripod.
the idea was to grab as much water drops possible. w/o the flash, cannot get so many d. yes, we were really wet.