Скачать или смотреть Clair de Lune // Debussy // Philip Lee Cover

Special thanks to the Ding family for letting us use their spectacular Steinway & Sons piano and their house.


// Director's Commentary //

Where do I even start? I looked back at my Adele's "Someone Like You" video from March where in the Director's Commentary, I had said it was the most intense production I've done. I think this video takes that title now. Given that I had done that video before, music cover videos weren't as new and foreign to me. I knew what work had to be done before filming, I knew what equipment to bring for filming, and then how to edit it and put all of the clips together. Yet, problems arose one after another, each one far different from things I've ever tried to figure out. It seems like my computer is more creative than me in generating what unexpected issue to throw at me. Though with all that said, I'm thankful that I learned so much from making this video.

One such problem was having to play and memorize this piece in a matter of a couple days. The day before I started playing "Clair de Lune," I had just come back from another piano competition. I had worked on my other piece for over a year and now I suddenly had to switch gears to Debussy. Plus, when I was memorizing the piece, I had no idea when filming would be and had absolutely no script prepared for filming. I didn't really know what I was doing.

We then called the Ding family (who let us use their piano last time) to set up a filming date. Turned out it was just 3 days away and I had to buckle down and get everything ready for shooting. I memorized the piece until I could almost picture the sheet music in my head as I played (it's incredibly important everything is memorized since there's so little time to make mistakes and look at sheet music while you film).

We brought an entire car full of lighting and audio equipment to the Dings' house and proceeded as usual. First, do some manual labor and move all of the couches and furniture to the side of the room. Second, set up all lighting and audio equipment. Third, get the camera ready. Fourth, record the piano audio (that's what you hear in the video) in one take. Fifth, play the recorded audio really loudly on speakers (which I forgot to bring) and essentially "lip-sync" (but with a piano) to the music. In post-production, you would mute the video footage and overlay the recorded audio and edit the footage so that everything is in sync. Well I had about 3 one-takes of the piano audio. The 3rd one was the best but of course, I ended up using the 2nd one as I filmed but I only realized this when I started editing. Of course I couldn't use the 3rd audio recording now because it wouldn't sync with the videos. But the 2nd recording had so many mistakes. So... I spent a day manipulating the audio and combining the 2nd and 3rd recordings into a single new, reworked, recording (I also turned the microphone too sensitive giving a ton of sharp piercing noises that I hopefully eliminated; shoutout to Brandon Jennings). This new recording is what you hear and what I used as the base for syncing the video.

So after going through 30 GB of recorded footage, after 3 days of editing, here you go. I'm proud with the final product and I hope you enjoy it!


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