j.lowe : making and finding stuff

The first ‘professional’ music video I directed was for the Portland band King Black Acid. I pitched the band by walking around Portland and getting strangers to sing lyrics from the band’s song INTO THE SUN off a portable CD player with headphones (remember life before IPODs?). It worked. Daniel and I connected and we shot this video at Dantes using a lot of local help:

The middle of the video features a scratch effect that was part happy accident, part endless experimenting. Back then my Imac would take hours to render so I would tweak footage any which way I could, hit render, and take a look at the results in the morning.

Working with Daniel was challenging. I was used to working fast and furious, and he was much more detail oriented. I kept showing him cuts I liked and he just didn’t seem happy. I felt like he was trying to sabotage the video and just didn’t want it to ever be finished. I was wrong. Daniel wanted the video to be perfect – even if it meant it would take longer – and he had every intention of the video being finished. We finally made a deal. He would come over to my apartment and I would give him a full day to sort of direct the edit and I would do whatever he asked. At the end of the day the video would be done.

For about 12 hours Daniel sat on my cheap Urban Outfitters fold out chair while I cut on my 2002 era IMAC. He would suggest making certain shots more film like, by stacking the shots on top of each other and making the top see through – then dialing the blacks down. When it didn’t look good enough he’d have me slightly slow down the speed of the clip. Poof. It started looking more film-like.

He made me cut out things I was too attached to, randomly delete certain frames…etc. Etc.

And by the end of the day I can honestly say the video was 10 times better than where I had gotten it on my own.

The whole time I had thought Daniel was getting in my way. The truth was I was in my own way. I learned a lot from that experience.

King Black Acid broke up after our video showed at the SXSW Film Festival.

Years have passed. I didn’t hear from Daniel for awhile. Then two years ago I started hearing mumblings. Daniel was working on music again in his basement. People were getting together with him and practicing.

And now this post on his myspace page spotted by Kevin Moyer:

05/26/08 4:18PM Live shows

I’ve put together a new line up of players and what I think are awesome new songs. The band will be called King Black Acid and the Sacred Heart. I’ve made a conscious effort with the song writing, to get right to the heart of the song and distill it’s very essence into an explosive sonic adventure. In the past I had dressed the songs heavily with washes of textural ambiance. Now it’s hooks, riff’s and crushing beats while still retaining the “dream life” that allows a song to live on it’s own. These songs will be birthed like ghosts into the world. We are very excited about performing the songs live and sharing them with you folks, our friends and family. We are starting to book shows for this summer. If you know of a place we should be playing, let us know.

It looks like right now our first show will be Sat. July 19th at Doug Fir w/ New York Rifles and The UpsideDown. The first few shows with the new players and new songs are always exciting because anything can happen. When the band gets barreling along like a freight train, one wrong move can wipe out the first few rows of audience. But when everything is coming together, the musical experience transcends all others. Come down to the show and see for yourself. We hope to see you there.

cheers -Daniel 

This show will be perfect.

I reccomend putting 7/19/08 on your calender now.