Producing Transylvania Stud’s White Witch Music Videos

I recently had the pleasure of working with Transylvania Stud again for the release of his second album, White Witch. When I heard Andrew had some new music in production I asked for a sneak preview, and minutes later I was pitching video ideas!

It All Started With a Text Message (Again)

So after some quick back and forth before my flight departed, my brain went to work on ideas. I’ll admit that writing a treatment for a music video is one of my least favorite things to do, but a necessary evil if I want to get anything produced. You can check out my original music video treatment notes here – Transylvania-Stud-Treatment.pdf (704 downloads) .

One major difference you’ll notice from the treatment to the final videos is the final shoot location settings. My DP Bill Cornelius and I flew into Richmond and only had roughly 36 hours to shoot 98% of the footage I would need. At this point, you’re probably thinking “36 hours is plenty of time for one 5 minute video”, well… we wanted to put out SEVEN music videos, not just one. So with that in mind, we had to be a little flexible if we wanted to pull off this marathon weekend.

Transylvania Stud Shoot – Weekend Timeline

Friday
- 8am – Hop a flight out of Nashville, TN with a truckload of camera gear
- 2pm – Arrive in Richmond, VA, and pick up our generator for day 2 thanks to ShareGrid
- 4pm – Secure the first location for “Unconditional Numb” and begin camera build and blocking
- 5pm – Shooting begins
- 9pm – Start lighting and blocking for “Drown” at second location
- 11pm – Wrap
Saturday
- 6am – Breakfast and plan for the day and finalize location for “Three Fold” and “Long Way Down”
- 7am – Lighting and blocking for “Three Fold”
- 8am – Shooting begins
- 11am – Day 2 wrap on location three
- 12pm – Meet Virginia Film office rep at location four and start lighting
- 2pm – Start shooting for “In Over Your Head”, “High Stakes”, and “Cloak and Dagger”
- 6pm – Wrap on location four
- 7pm – Dinner
- 8pm – Pickup shots for “Unconditional Numb”
- 9pm – Wrap
Sunday
- 7am – Breakfast and blocking for “Long Way Down” begins
- 8am – Shooting for “Long Way Down” begins
- 8:30am – Police are called on us
- 8:40am – Police are totally cool and we’re back to business
- 9am – Wrap on “Long Way Down”
- 11am – Hop a flight back to Nashville, TN

Behind the Scenes Gallery

Editing It All Together

After a long weekend, it was time to edit it all together. I won’t bore you with the details, but we did live stream the rough cut edit session for “In Over Your Head”. Check it out below!