It's the nature of things. To truly move forward you have to evolve. Whether it's the entire human race as a whole, or on a much smaller but no less important individual level. I myself have gone through some major evolutions since I first started this blog. I pretty much fully abandoned it as I made a personal transformation from a recreational writer with a full-time job installing solar panels throughout the thumb of Michigan, into full fledged videographer and small business owner of Welcome to this World Video Productions.
Genesis
It all started back in August of 2011, after bringing along an old Mini DV camcorder with me to film the Battlecross CD release show in support of their Metal Blade Records debut album, Pursuit of Honor. I filmed the entire set, went home and
fired up the free Windows Movie Maker on my PC and then cut the set up into individual songs to be uploaded to YouTube. I did this to try and help spread the BX name and music to those who have never heard of them before. This is an example of how the videos turned out.
After uploading and sharing the videos, I realized that the majority of live performance videos on the internet, including the ones I just uploaded (despite my feeble attempt at audio editing), sounded utterly horrific. A lot of times the audio is completely unrecognizable and makes the video unwatchable. Even if a band sounds amazing live, when viewing the same exact performance through a crappy YouTube video, the viewer just ends up frustrated by the lack of clarity. Just think about it for a minute... a potential new fan goes on YT to try and find some new bands to check out. They come across a video of your band that was filmed by your buddy on his cell phone. 10 seconds into watching it they close out the tab in disgust and move on to the next band because it just sounds like a ball of incomprehensible distortion. Even though the intent of your buddy uploading the vids was admirable, a possible new fan was lost. Not good. Not good at all.
Inception
I decided that I would try and offer local artists something to prevent this from happening in the future, and the initial spark of what was to become WttW was ignited. I did some research on HD video cameras with good audio recording capabilities, found the one that best served my purpose, saved up some money and bought that mofo. This resulted in videos with MUCH better audio, but still only a single camera to capture the subject. This camera became the backbone of, and still is the trusty secret weapon of the WttW arsenal, as you can clearly hear in this example from the Mt. Clemens, MI. stop during the Rose Funeral, Diamond Plate, Battlecross Fall/Winter tour 2011...
Rose Funeral performing "Crucify.Kill.Rot" at the Emerald Theatre
Baptism
The next step in the progression towards the creation of WttW was during a Battlecross headlining show at The Machine Shop in Flint Michigan, when I decided to try filming them with multiple cameras. I once again dusted off the old Mini DV to act as a drum cam, put my new HD cam with the good audio on a tripod for the full stage shot, and then whipped out my Android 3G cell phone for the close ups (seriously, I did). This was a crazy hodgepodge of different file formats and resolutions, but somehow I was able to put all that chaos together. I filmed all the bands on the bill that night, including 3 Parts Demon, Sin Theorem, Deadringer and of course Battlecross, for whom my longtime close friend from high school, Mike Kreger played drums. I only ended up using the drum cam for the Battlecross and 3 Parts Demon sets due to the limited battery power of the Mini DV camera. I regret to say that the BX videos no longer exist due to a fallout between their management and I, so unfortunately I cannot show you any of those (and not by my choice), but here is the mega-talented 3 Parts Demon from that night, performing an early version of "Eden, Post Exodus"...
3 Parts Demon performing live at The Machine Shop
Communion
My fathers best friend since 2nd grade was my very first customer. He is a longtime local bass player and was playing a gig at The Detroit Pub with his band Progressive Rock Orchestra. We ended up settling on a fee of $75 to film their set. Looking back now, the video edits were crude, but they were miles above anything else any other local bands had up on YouTube.
Progressive Rock Orchestra covering "Hocus Pocus" at The Detroit Pub
Exodus
With one job under my belt, I decided to solicit all of the bands playing the upcoming Ogrefest 2012 at Mac's Bar in Lansing. Since nobody in the local metal scene really knew who I was, I decided to throw in some name tossing of knowing and helping out the BX boys (with permission of course) as a reference, and included a link to the Progressive Rock Orchestra vids I just made. Of the 15 bands playing the event, two of them bit the hook and decided to hire me. Lansing bands Dozic and The Devastator (which just happened to end up being the last show The Devastator ever played). While we were drinking and mingling in the parking lot, another band, Bullpig, decided to use our services once they talked to us. The problem now was that I couldn't do all of this on my own. I needed help to pull it off. I turned to the only person I knew I could really count on, and persuaded my girlfriend Pamela Anderson (not THAT Pamela Anderson), to help operate one of the cameras.
Dozic performing live at Ogrefest 2012
Spreading the Gospel
After the Ogrefest videos went public, the response was very positive, and the WttW name started seeping out to other bands in the Michigan metal scene. It wasn't long before we started getting some serious inquiries about filming some more shows. Over the course of the next year we filmed; Genocya's 10 year anniversary show, all the bands at Capital City Chaos III, Hokori, Withhold the Blood and Severing the Need, all at The Blackened Moon (rip). We filmed Dark Psychosis, Halstatt and Wulfhook at Mac's Bar and Nurse Ratched at The Old Miami. We even started filming rap artists and comedians after hooking up with local comedian Kegan Ault and his business partner (and head of ICP security!) Spider.
Lansing band Genocya covering "Black Magic" by Slayer
at now defunct The Blacked Moon Concert Hall
Even after filming all these shows, I still was just winging it with no real knowledge of the trade. I was totally oblivious to what was really considered professional filming and editing. I just did what I thought looked good. It was at this time that I started joining various online forums, watching tutorials and really started learning the in's and out's of the video making business. My editing got much better towards the end of the year, but with such an odd array of different cameras being used coupled with not doing any color correction, the visual aspect was lacking a sense of uniformity (though still tons better than most video on the web!). Not to mention we were limited to shooting in 720p with the entry-level cam setup we were using at that time.
Editing got much better at the end of 2012, as seen
in this video of Konkeror live at The Token Lounge
2013 started off great as we made our way up to The Machine Shop in Flint to film four of the bands playing the first ever Damagefest. We filmed 2 songs from each band; Execrate, After the Minor, From Blue to Gray and Six Seconds to Oblivion. The lighting and sound system was much bigger and better than anything we had done thus far, so the videos turned out pretty flippin' awesome, but we were still being bogged down by our less than spectacular camera capabilities and my lack of knowledge on color correction editing. We did one more job, Demise of the Enthroned live at the Aloha Lounge, before we were finally able to upgrade our equipment.
After The Minor killing it at The Machine Shop during Damagefest 2013
The Second Coming
We bought our new editing machine (built by PC wizard Jon Fodal), and a couple of brand new Canon DLSR's almost exactly one year after our official company launch. It was a fairly big investment for us since we barely ended up in the black for 2012, and making a purchase this large would mean we would have to film a lot of shows in 2013 to break even. Now I had to learn how to use the new cameras, so we took them out to a local show being put on by Ron Philips at The Ritz in Warren, MI. to test them out. The dudes in Wulfhook were our guinea pigs. If you don't know who they are, they are an amazingly talented band with an old school power metal meets thrash feel to their sound. The footage looked much nicer than we were used to, even without yet knowing how to use them, nor how much control I actually had over the final look during the editing process. I messed around slightly with some color correcting presets in my editing software, but ultimately I realized that I unknowingly had the cameras on the wrong settings. The videos still came out pretty damn sweet though.
Wulfhook acting as guinea pigs for the new cameras
Fairly confidant in my ever-growing skills, and with our new professional level cameras in hand, we starting filming slew of shows after more and more local bands and promoters started to take notice of what we were doing for the local music community. We filmed Kill Whitey, Manic Outburst and Mingus at The Crimson Lounge, comedy rock band PLeTHoRA at The Machine Shop, Archaic Spatium at The New Dodge, and all the bands during Diddybop Entertainment's 420 Metal Bash at The Token Lounge, featuring Domestic Terror, Meat Beastly, Two Neck Noose, Kill Whitey, Nightkin (Mike "Gunface" McKenzie, Zach Gibson and Dave Lock), GutRot, and Saprogenic! Genocya even had us back out to film their set at Ogrefest 2013, which also happened to be drummer Tim Sever's last show with them, so it was pretty cool to capture such an intimate and monumental show.
the 2nd of only two live shows ever
Ascension
June 2013 is when I was finally truly happy with my filming and editing capabilities. Adam Ray from All Ends Black had out for the 2nd year in a row to film Capital City Chaos IV, this time being held at Uli's Haus of Rock in Lansing. We filmed all of the bands that played; Hillside Barrier, Past Tense, Hokori, Beyond the Fallout and All Ends Black, and all of the videos turned out beautifully. Once again we were flooded with inquiries by local artists who were interested in having some video work done after releasing the CCC vids.
"The Pungent Aroma of the Rotting Entrails" by Hokori
A large portion of these inquiries regarded whether or not we made official music videos too, and how much we charged for them. We were looking to break into that realm of the business, and were willing to work with a band for super cheap to be able to get a product out there. To be able to show people and potential clients what type of quality we are capable of, but we had not had the opportunity to make one yet. After correspondence with several potential bands looking for a music video, we ended up working with avant-garde metal band To Be Fed based out of Melvin, MI. The idea for the "Commonwealth Cannonade" video was born from the magnificently warped mind of To Be Fed frontman Kurt Nelson, and is a WWI period piece with a particularly gruesome torture scene stuck in the middle of some really beautiful outdoor performance shots. The reception from it has been phenomenal, so much so that even those who didn't like the music at all still watched the entire video. We are looking forward to filming another one, hopefully sooner than later.
The official music video for "Commonwealth Cannonade" by To Be Fed
Revelations
We continued to stay busy throughout the year to ultimately break even for all the new equipment purchases, as we filmed Demise of the Enthroned at Dalefest 2013, From Hell at Adrenaline Fest as well as at The Pyramid Scheme where the opened for the legendary Obituary, Execrate at The Detroit Pub, The Laughs at the Ritz and the Laughs & Raps Thanksgiving show at Bullfrog's. We re-invest all the money we make back into WttW, so we can buy more new equipment and continue to offer better and better final products. We now even have WttW T-shirts and custom glass pipes for sale as merch that you can purchase to help keep us around longer doing what we do.
We finished 2013 off with a bang, as we filmed all of the bands playing at the 'Kick the Fuck out of Cancer' benefit for 6-year old Abbey Fountaine at The Machine Shop on December 14th. While Rome Burns, Cripple Creak, Demise of the Enthroned, Lord Humungus and Shadows of Doubt all donated some great live music, and by the end of the night they were able to raise over $900 to help young Abbey out with her medical expenses! I am working on the videos from that night as I write this (well obviously not right now), and they look better than any of our previous work so far, and the work will only get better as we continue to hone our craft while at the same time helping local artists have their talent be seen in a professional manner.
Only time will tell what 2014 has in store for Welcome to this World Video Productions, but if it's anything like this past year, it will be nothing less than amazing! We already have a few live shows and music video shoots lined up or in the works, and we always work on a 1st come, 1st served basis, so if you want us out to film make sure you book the date asap.
- Ian Pfister
http://www.youtube.com/user/Welcome2thisWorldVid
https://www.facebook.com/welcome.to.this.world
welcome2thisworld.vid@gmail.com
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