I recently had the privilege of shooting this music video for “Homes in the Hometowns.” It was a perfect combination of all the things I love – songs, shooting on location, editing to music, working with musicians and having fun people to work with.

This was a collaboration with a client, GotToBeNC, which is the North Carolina Dept of Agriculture, and country music artist Paige King Johnson.

When I shot prior promos for this client, we used the backing track for this song as the background to those promos.  They asked me later if I wanted to do a music video for the song, and I jumped at the chance.

THE LOCATION

The location was Johnson’s Farm, a spacious property in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, that features a small aircraft landing strip, which meant we could drive a tractor around without crushing any crops trying to grow. And a stately home with a wrap-around porch, a couple of barns, a general store and lots of open ground.

HOW I SHOT THIS

The trick was, we only had one day to shoot this! It started at 9am and wrapped by 3pm. I did the whole production solo. I shot with a Sony a7iii using a Tamron 28-75mm f 2.8 lens on a Zhiyun Crane 2. My purpose was to keep the camera in motion the whole time, hence the gimbal.

Paige came dressed for spring even though the morning was in the high 30s, and she had to stay bundled between takes, often sitting in her vehicle with the heater running while we set up for the next shot.

We basically ran through the song in its entirety about 15 times, each at a different location on the farm. We flowed with it because we didn’t even do a tech scout prior.

I used one Aputure 300 light with a softbox to get the sunlight look where I needed it, but mainly we relied on natural light when we were out in the field or on the tractor.

DRIVING A TRACTOR

Paige had driven a tractor before, but this one was an antique and had a stick shift, which she had to learn on the spot. But when I saw the tractor being pulled onto the property on a trailer, I immediately asked if the driver could pull us around while I shot from the truck bed. A filmmaking trick for car shots on the highway, it was perfect for having Paige sing while looking like she was driving.

For these closeup shots like below, I switched to a Tamron 70-180mm f 2.8.

Then we pulled the tractor off the trailer and she started driving it. She was going so slowly at first that I felt safe being very close to the tractor while she was driving and singing. She was listening to the song using my iPhone on the seat beside her for all the shots.

I shot a few passes of Paige driving through the open field with a DJI Mini 2 drone, trying for an eye-level angle where possible. I’ve learned farms don’t look as good from a high angle as they do from the ground, something about the perspective and the beauty of distant horizons is lost from a birds-eye view.

THE BAND

Tim Parrish, the lead client, showed up with the big NC pickup truck later, and he had a bigger bluetooth speaker with him, which helped when the band arrived  at 2pm.

The drummer and guitarist set up in front of a white shed with a little landing and stairs on the front. I threw a light on the left side of the scene because the sun’s angle was making the entire scene a little unbalanced. We shot the song about three times through with the band in different configurations, for editing variety.

THE EDIT

I edited on my Macbook Pro with the M1 Max chip using Adobe Premiere. There might be a quicker way to get it done, but I basically stacked every take, synced to the music, and subtracted the layers as needed to find the right shot for the right moment in the song. To me it was easy because I already knew from shooting it where the best shots were.

I showed the client and Paige a rough cut of which I did two versions, with and without a few agricultural stock shots and some scenes from other shoots I had done for GotToBeNC. They chose the latter, had a couple of suggestions/notes, I did one revised cut and it was approved. The client is very easy to work with and the layers are not deep at all. Thank you Caitlyn and Tim.

I did the color grading using Cinema Grade, which I find to be a great tool.

A DREAM JOB

This was literally a dream project for me since I play guitar and write songs as a hobby. (And note, none of my songs are anywhere near as good as this one.) I did find myself singing harmony to the takes by the end of the day. Luckily Paige wasn’t distracted by it.