This video covers the time that Harrison and I spent in Iceland for Airwaves 2013.
This was a spectacular trip from end to end. Stars aligned, we met amazing people from all over the world, enjoyed the most perfect weather imaginable, and experienced incredible bands. I'm still blown away by the level of amazing music being produced in this country. Their badass per capita ratio is astounding.
The Trip
Ice on Pond:
"Imagine fireworks made of ice"
"Imagine two men playing guitars...of ice"
"We don't believe in genres. We believe in nothing but ice and magic."
"If you imagine an ice chamber filled with nothing but a man with an ice guitar and another man with an ice drum stick and an ice drum kit."
"Don't try to squeeze into these preconceptions of what ice is, what music is, what life is."
"It's all it's all its its its MAGIC. It's magic on ice."
"It's festival magic. It's Disney on ice."
"It's festival magic on Ice."
I have to say that one of my favorite memories is Harrison and I attending a Múm concert in a church downtown. Luckily, the lovely Lucy and Anika where ahead of us in line and saved us space on a pew in the middle of the church. French guy and Shawn sat behind us while Tatsuya and Mika dangled their legs from the second floor.
Our view was partially obstructed but the sound of the hall was incredible. Múm formed their exquisite accumulation of sounds with such care that two hours passed in an instant. In a daze with a beautiful lady next to me (possibly Harrison), I had rarely felt at such ease. The entire experience felt like a massage. There wasn't a single peep by the audience during the songs, only the occasional DSLR shutter. That is until Shawn attempted to leave during the encore, ended up knocking things over, and exclaiming "I BROKE GOD'S BOOK." A barrage of daggered stares shot back toward us and I hadn't had to keep myself from laughing so hard since I was a kid fucking around while bored in church.
Funny how those things come full circle.
We received the news of Lou Reed's death while we were in Iceland. One of my favorite memories was Nite Jewel inserting a rendition of the Underground's Heroin during a slowed down version of her song One Second Of Love. It caught me off guard in how wonderfully executed and incredible beautiful it came across. I only wish I could find a recording of it.
Moments
1:02 - Harrison bailing on Geysir
1:30 - Shelter
2:00 - This guy
2:06-2:40 - ICE ON POND
2:46 - THESE AMAZING KIDS
2:57 - ~4EVER~
The Video
Much like that last video covering this festival, I wanted to get a lot of slow pans covering the beautiful country with one short sweep of the festival in the middle.
The most important aspect of the scenery shots this time around was movement. Not just the pans themselves but connecting one shot to the next by being aware of how each shot will be viewed.
There are the alternating left-right pans of the intro which partially use the light echo of the guitar to spring each shot. Then there are the shots once the percussion kicks in where I tried to match eye movement to the next shot. This idea has always stuck with me since I read an article about eye movement data collected from people viewing text based websites. (similar: http://usabilitynews.org/eye-movement-analysis-of-text-based-web-page-layouts/). I first attempted this at the beginning of my North Korea video (click for link).
After walking away from the wooden troll at 1:15, I exit to the right while the next shot starts from an view friendly angle after following me off screen and gently pans to the left. I tried to keep this continuity of shot going until the lyrics kick in.
During the Ice on Pond speech, I tried my best to align wthe word "ice" with guitar strums as well as beats in their speech to beats or shifts in the song. The "Imagine an ice drum kit" part when the drums come in is my favorite.