Sorry for speaking of myself in the third person. But there has been a very cool and satisfying thing that has happened in the last two weeks that kind of makes a little concrete confirmation of a project I’ve been working on all year. As regular readers of the blog know, I have been filming people at open mics, and especially interviewing people on-camera at open mics and jam sessions around the world since last February or March in a nearly one-year filming project that will come to an end at the end of this month, or early December. In the last two weeks, two different talented young French musician friends of mine have taken some of the rough footage that I shot of them during performances in Paris and edited these into video clips.
It was done with footage I had NOT intended to use in my open mic film, and some of it was pretty rough stuff done with simple cameras – to say the least. But these two guys, Niki Demiller, and a guy who calls his act/band, All-The-Roads, both put together very cool little music videos with what was available. And they both credited me with the filming. Talk about a beautiful encouraging thing. Check out the footage below. They’re both interesting musicians as well, I have to add. Niki used to front a band called The Brats, which along with BB Brunes, was one of the great hopes of the last decade in the wave of new bands that came out of French youth. He’s now worked on this solo project. All-The-Roads has just begun playing in the open mics around Paris, and I think the guy has a lot of talent – to say nothing of both a physical look to him and a sound/quality of voice as well, that reminds me of Elvis Costello…
All-The-Roads:
Niki Demiller:
PS, these were not the first time my video footage was used in a cool little video. The Red Bulletin Formula One paddock newspaper used more than an hour’s worth of footage I shot on my Canon HV20 HDV tape camera in 2008 and they edited it down to a minute and a half for a little trailer on their web site. It was a race of former F1 drivers and journalists in go karts near the F1 circuit in Spain. Check it out: