De la Calle, by Bombasta.

Flower of Darkness (Slab Cinema edit), by Los Mescaleros.

Angela Martinez, with Slab Cinema, asked me to do a promotional video for her family’s business. She left the concept pretty much up to me. I wanted to highlight the portability of their services. They can set up their inflatable screen, projector, and sound system anywhere. I had wanted to do this in a field somewhere on the far southside. But before I could track down a good location, we settled on the Pearl. (This was back before the Pearl became completely cauldroned off by the horrid condo buildings which now obscures any vestige of aesthetics the older builds might imbue to the scene.)

It’s very much in a warm home movie style (I probably went overboard on the vignetting and color settings in Magic Bullet). I like that the Alvarado brothers (fellow residents of the Southtown region) showed up on their bicycles.

The slow motion works well with the Los Mescaleros song which the band were so kind to allow us to use.

Pretty Packages, by the Push Pens.

Direct by Erik Bosse and Steve Bailey.

Shot and edited by Erik Bosse.

Music by the Push Pens.

Featuring Manuel “Cros” Esquivel, Dino Foxx, Billy Muñoz, Claudia A. Rubio, and Chris Castillo.

This piece was created as an online promotion for “The Push Pens: Last Call For Truth,” a full-length play produced by Jump-Start Performance Co. The show was written (words and music) by Cros, Dino, and Billy. Steve Bailley directed the play. Art design by Blue Hernandez.

For this promo video we chose a song with a bit of a narrative. We needed a bar, so we reached out to the friendly folks who ran the Pedicab Bar & Grille (which sadly burned down a few months after we filmed this). Claudia and Chris were reeled into to be a couple of the “pretty packages.”

I shot this on my Canon 7D (which was still fairly new to me). I wanted to use the existing bar light, so I had to use my fastest lens, which was a 50mm. This is why things all look so cramped. Also, I had that lens open almost all the way, with way too shallow a depth of field. The cut away shots are on stage at Jump-Start with Blue’s wonderful mural (which he created for the show) in the background.

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Below is some more information from a blog post I wrote about the shoot.

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Here’s a behind the scenes shot [at Jump-Start] of the three Push Pens, with director Steve Bailey.

I was a lot of fun. I am so in love of shooting HD video with the Canon 7D. Stick a fast lens on the camera (I’m using a 50mm f 1.4 lens, which is longer than I really want, but it does look great!), and you’ve got a lovely look!

Bars are perfect places to shoot with these new breeds of HD video-enable DSLRs. Move your subjects around to the most flattering pool of light. Find a sweet compromise between ISO and f-stop, while keep the shutter speed at a 50th of a second (if you’re shooting at 24 frames per second).

The concept behind this particular Push Pens song, “Pretty Packages,” is that pretty people bring opportunities of love into your life often when you’re quite happily in another relationship. And the question is, how will you deal with it?

The Push Pens are Dino Foxx, Cros Esquivel, and Billy Munoz. Here Billy is the bartender. The two parallel stories are about Dino and Cros, two best buds, one gay, one straight. Dino is being seduced by a pretty guy; Cros is half-heartedly fighting off a pretty girl.

And there there’s Steve Bailey, the director of the up-coming Push Pens’ show at Jump-Start. He was there at the shoot, doing this great job of shouting out suggestions of what the actors should be doing. We weren’t running sound, so this was fine. But better than fine, it was a blast to have Steve on set. He helped to move things along fairly quickly. And he had us all laughing and at ease.

I’ve known that I would really like Steve for years, but he’s rather stand-offish. But lately I’ve been privileged to see him work. He’s just the sort of brilliant. committed, playful, wise, and sweet man I always wanted him to be.

Here are some screen-grabs fro the shoot.

And for some broader context, here’s a scene from the play which I shot also for promotional purposes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esgin4mNl58