Filming & Editing My First Fashion-Music Video

This past year has been a smorgasbord of new experiences, including working on a music video with an immensely talented, fun crew of videographers, producers, and actors. Renée Elizabeth Lavoie (Velvette the GhOst) is a content creator, short and feature indie film director, actress, and much more, and the one who conceptualized the project. In short, “Call Your Mom” by Chase Icon is an electronic dance song about the artist getting back at her cheater boyfriend. It is a sleek, glamorous, and ruthless bop, much like the fashion-music video we’re creating from it.

The video stars Velvette and fellow content creator John S. DeSimone (Swiim). Our director is photographer and filmmaker Raina Bhartia, and our assistant director is photographer and filmmaker Prince Aibangbe. All of us, except for the models, operated the cameras.

In post, I am the primary editor: ordering the clips (over 20 gigabytes of footage captured on-site), adjusting the speed of clips in dynamic ways, and adding an adjustment layer to color grade. I opted for a sharp, high-contrast, monochrome look to match the vision Velvette had for the project. An initial concept video (a short snippet) was put together by fellow editor Jonny Arruda, and it became my starting point for mapping out the rest of the full video.

Before the finished video goes live, I created a blooper reel that captures the fun we had during our shoot day, complete with wacky outtakes and sheer randomness. Enjoy, and stay tuned for the actual version of “Call Your Mom.” Coming soon!