Day one was shooting our "super villain" story.

We step into the story at the end of an epic battle between good and evil. Evil goes down hard and we are witnessing the death of our super villain ( Jonathan Schaech). He removes his helmet for one last breath of air and we are sucked into his brain. His life flashes before his eyes, represented of course by POWERMAN 5000.

The death scene takes place on the edge of a hundred floor sky scraper. Our villain hangs helplessly above the city below. Of course the magic of all this is a little thing called green screen. In fact about ninety percent of our video will be shot this way. This will leave us with tons of options, but green screen has it's challenges as well.

Anyway, Schaech kicks ass with his brief performance. You can always tell when an actor knows what he is doing. They do subtle things that are hard to detect when in front of you but the camera reads with ease. Like a pro, he nails it and leaves. One more shot tonight, involving me and a giant robot arm... of course.

Ya see, we can't have the line between good and evil drawn so clearly. We can't have the hero totally win. After all the song is called Super Villain. So, from the darkness emerges another, a dark figure half man, half machine. His machine arm reaches down to retrieve the discarded helmet of the super villain. He lifts it,  grins and walks away, giving evil one more chance to rise.

Now that's drama!

It also sounds simple but that damn robot arm weighs a ton and won't quite grab the helmet right. After multiple attempts and wiring the hemet to the arm, we get the shot. Magical!

And that's a wrap on day one. Tomorrow, band performance...

What can I say about band performance other than it is a band performance, over and over and over. Anyone who has ever been on a video shoot knows that by the end of the day they are guaranteed one thing... to have the song stuck in their head for at least the next three days!

The thing that was a bit different this time was the fact that we did this all in front of green screen. I mentioned earlier about the challenges that it creates and for me it was feeling like I was performing in a vacuum. See, if you have a set behind you or crowd in front of you it helps you go someplace. Green screen is cold and unforgiving. It is no surprise that most films that are made this way hardly produce great performances. Something George Lucus has a hard time understanding.

Luckily George Lucas wasn't directing this video ( I kid George Lucus!) and we killed it!

After eight hours of jumping around and singing we called it. Mission accomplished!

Now comes the real work... edit, special effects and keying out all that fucking green screen!! Who's idea was that anyway?!