We recorded a cover of The Cure’s Love Song some time in early 2006 at the original Mastermind Studios in Hamilton.
In 2006, there weren’t too many consumer grade digital video cameras that didn’t look like complete garbage, so we found a cheap super 8 camera on eBay to, as the kids say, create some content.
The project would also work as a test to see how viable a future music video would be on super 8. It was a good plan.
Unfortunately, as you can hear in the attached video, when digitizing film there are a few steps where you have to depend on others. First the lab has to develop your film, and then somebody has to digitize it. These days in Toronto you can get that lab on Niagara street to do both, but back in 2006 we found ourselves dependent on a guy in Brantford called Roger at Digital Duck.
He and his lackey left a hot mic on during the whole process, insulted and ridiculed us and our creative choices, and even admitted to errors they were making and leaving in their final product.
The ordeal was irritating for two reasons. Firstly, when you’re in your 20’s and trying to do creative stuff it’s really helpful to receive some kind of encouragement even from “normals” ‘cuz it’s pretty lonely out there. Secondly, the fact that they left a mic on and didn’t realize it raised some other questions about their professionalism and work quality.
Roger gets really close to understanding what we were going for, ie., “an old home movie, shot yesterday”, but can’t quite get there. Shooting our recording process on an old medium, handheld, and producing what looks like a home movie that can’t quite be placed in time (along with the added bonus of a test run with the processing lab and digital conversion) was the point. We produced a video relatively inexpensively, that was different than anything our contemporaries were doing, and didn’t look like the kind of digital garbage that expensive prosumer cameras were producing in 2006. For us it was a success.
Anyway, I’d love to say the whole episode doesn’t piss me off here, 20 years later, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. The best advice I can give you if you know someone in their formative years making creative choices you don’t understand is to either shut up or say things like “wow” and “are you almost ready for dinner?” Shit like that.
Also if you’re a creative shooting super 8 or 16mm, use niagaracustomlab.com. And if you live in Brantford, Ontario, don’t trust any professionals and really just leave, now, or as soon as you can.
Below is the video with some of what I’m talking about. To be fair, I’ve edited Roger and his buddy down to just the hits – it wasn’t really this rapid-fire. I cut out two of their more egregious admissions ‘cuz they didn’t pertain directly to us. Brantford, baby. Spend a month there some weekend.
