Erica Russo: Tool Shed Recordings

Sailor is one in a series of three music videos we call the Tool Shed Recordings (the others are Zombie and Heat It Up)—just a few musicians, a borrowed tool shed, and some microphones.

Multi-camera shoot  Erica Russo’s acoustic folk called for simple, straightforward photography. Ben operated two cameras simultaneously: one on a short slider, the other on a tripod next to it. We ran through each song four to seven times, using different lenses and shooting different angles.

Editing  We recorded each live take with a portable sound board, and selected the best performance for the video. As a result, only one of the takes synchronizes perfectly with the final song. To account for slight variations in tempo, all the other takes were aligned by hand, and a handful of shots were speed-adjusted by about 1 percent.