TITLE: Chaotic Emotion Outlet Video (aka C.E.O) "Grab It"
STATUS/DATE: 1999
GENRE: Music Video
APPROX LENGTH: Approx 5 min
LOCATION: Filmed at The Box Studios Woodstock, Va
 

           
WHAT IS:
The first and only music video to date from C.E.O or Chaotic Emotion Outlet (if you are not into acronyms). C.E.O. as well as Shamash are responsible for much of the music in some upcoming features (see TRAVELER the warning). This video also preceded youtube by 5 or so years (now things like this are commonplace). It was our idea back then (and at the time it was true) that many small bands had CD's , but not many had videos of their favorite songs. I guess looking back it was a good marketing start and forward thinking on our part. Chatotic Emotion Outlet at the time was more than simply "a band" but rather an ideal and a culmination of talents, interests, and theories of technologies and various evolutionary states and the route that they would take.

PRODUCTION:
Not really sure whose idea it was at the time (the camera changed hands a multiple of times), there is a segment where the camera seems to be shaken with the first impact of notes of the song after the intro. Whether this was accidental or purposeful it is one of my favorite tricks to have the perspective of the audience literally affected visually by the sound.

A variety of home-made filters where used, sometimes a bottle with liquid in it, sometimes shot though stringy spiderweb-like fabric.

Lots random images were filmed that week, one of which was a point of view shot dancing in a pile of thick wires. Chellini upon editing of the footage found that it lined up rather strangely gavepower to the "dragon breathing underwater" sound.

The footage was of us playing the song live at a different speed than the recorded one(the live one was a bit slower). In hind sight I found that sometimes musicals and music videos are sometimes filmed this way (two that come to mind are the puppetry in Little Shop of Horrors and the Primus video "Shake hand with Beef".

One technique that was explored was Chroma keying and superimposing over top the edited footage. For the editing in this video I grant  Chellini full credit. He even did a awesome job laying an animation I did of plesiosaur over the video of us playing . The animation of the plesiosaur was produced with a standard video camcorder years earlier by merely hitting record, pause, record pause, record then pausing between every subtle movement. This was at the time digital cameras were way to expensive and the ones that were affordable did not have the best quality. As far as the claymation, this one in particular was in no doubt inspired by early Primus videos.
 
On a final note we used some Disney-esque special effects, making ghost like images in a mirror. Everything that was set up on one side of a sheet of Plexiglas was meticulously produced verbatim on the other side according to how the item would be reflected on the other side. In the end of the video one of our mutual friends and conceptual artists could be seen waving his hand over A FIRE THAT WAS NOT THERE! To top it all off he is seen in another cut taking the lyrics and or tab of the song and sticking it in the center of the fire but it is refusing to burn. A fun simple cheap effect, but very effective if I must say so myself. This may have been inspired by riding the Haunted Mansion in Disney World when I was a kid (pre-Eddie Murphy), there was this part in the ride where the you glanced in the mirror in front of you and saw a ghost riding in the car behind you. Kind of always stuck with me.


Thanks for your interest,

tjparsons