If you haven't checked in yet on the music video It's Just A Mystery which I believe might be the first in crime fiction publishing history (until someone proves me wrong, at which point I'll say, "oh"), please take a moment--okay, three minutes and fifty seconds--to watch. Then come back here. I'll tell you a little bit about it.
Okay? Good.
I got the idea for the song, which I have to admit is the first time I've gotten an idea for a song since I was required to write some for a college course thirty years ago (!), because of one of the periodic threads on DorothyL about what certain sub-genres in mystery mean, and where the lines are drawn. This would be about last October or so. It takes me a while to write songs because, um, I hadn't done it in thirty years, and I wasn't that good at it to begin with.
So after many sheets of crumpled legal pad (can you tell I was in avoidance mode from my actual paying work?), I had a workable set of lyrics, and picked up the guitar to try and work out a tune. The problem was, it seemed to be exactly the same tune I wrote for that class at Rutgers in 1979, and even though you wouldn't have known the difference, I would, and that was troubling.
It took a long time, and I went through a number of direct steals... um, homages. James Taylor, Jim Croce, a little Billy Joel (I can't play Paul Simon to save my life). Finally, something resembling a tune took shape, and I practiced for a while, not knowing why. I had to read the lyrics off a sheet, since I had no talent for remembering them (something I've read that I have in common with John Lennon, perhaps the only thing).
Eventually, I had to decide what to do with the result of this effort. Not having (nor wanting, nor deserving) a recording contract, my next best alternative--going door-to-door with a guitar and singing it to people--seemed somehow inefficient. What if people weren't home? Would I have to come back? What would happen after I got out of my neighborhood? What about when I hit the ocean?
That's when the notion of a music video was born. I'd seen enough book trailers--and liked most of what I saw--to know it is an effective tool, but I didn't have much of a budget (okay, NO budget; are you happy now?), and besides, the song wasn't about one book (although I certainly knew A NIGHT AT THE OPERATION was coming in April--a week from tomorrow, for those keeping score at home). It was about genres and sub-genres and sub-sub-genres.
So a music video, something I wasn't aware of anyone else doing just yet, seemed novel (you should pardon the expression). But I didn't know how to make one. And I wasn't going to turn myself over to some anonymous filmmaker whose work I not only didn't know, but couldn't afford.
Luckily, my son was available.
Josh is a film major at the Antionette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, part of Drexel University in Philadelphia (and there's a sneaky reference to that in A NIGHT AT THE OPERATION, of all places). And as luck had it, I had just finished the song when he came home for his winter break in December. He brought his digital camcorder with him.
We discussed ideas and shot a "master" of me singing the song. A few times. I wasn't crazy about my performance on any of them, but as it turned out, it didn't matter. We ended up not using any of that footage, mostly because Josh's break ended and when he went back to school, he started a class on editing. The improved technology he acquired and the skills he gained made a difference. But it rendered the earlier footage unusable.
So we talked every night (we Skype, so everybody gets to see each other) about ideas for the video. And we scaled back our ideas for budgetary or practical reasons (we couldn't have a body fall behind me on the line "as further bodies drop"). There wouldn't be additional cast members or choreography. There would be me. In costume, sort of.
The weeks while Josh was in Philadelphia were devoted to me learning the lyrics to my own song (that perplexed expression on my face is an indicator that I was only partially successful) and him learning about editing tricks with Final Cut, which came in quite handy.
Once he showed up for spring break a couple of weeks ago, we were ready. We shot a new "master" of a slimmed-down version of the song (I used to do a highly unimpressive musical break in the middle, and there might have been another chorus somewhere) that was the best I was ever going to do, and we took some exterior shots (that sepia-toned "ivy covered halls" shot is of the quad on the Rutgers College campus, shot a little over a week ago that Josh sepia-ed up in post-production).
Then came the "costume" shots. We'd considered every idea we could to dramatize the "lady who works in the flower shop," including asking someone from a local florist to stand in front of her store, but when it came down to it, the best alternative was to have me put on the hat my wife wore at our wedding 22 years ago and put a scarf around my shoulders, and lip-sync badly.
When we tried to do what we called "film noir guy," we had some setbacks. Josh wanted to do a "window blind" shot, like in Double Indemnity, a movie he'd studied in American Classic Cinema (you wouldn't believe what we're paying for him to watch the Turner Classic Movies catalog and have someone explain it better than Robert Osborne). But the blinds in our front windows wouldn't cooperate, and we couldn't get dark enough shadows with the lighting we had. So that shot had to go.
Not to mention, as has been noted, we didn't have a trench coat.
Once we did all my parts, it was up to Josh to turn it all into something coherent, and here, he truly did shine. I'm not sure how any of that software works, but he cobbled all the footage (together, I think we had about a half hour that got cut down to three minutes and fifty seconds) into a tight little movie. I'm not crazy about the way I look, but he didn't have enough technology to change reality.
More than anything else, this was a great experience, working with my son on a project and trusting him to make it work, which he did beautifully. One night after we had shot a bunch of footage, I was going up to bed (college students stay up to ridiculous hours and then sleep until ridiculous hours), and Josh called up, "nice working with you today." At that moment, it didn't even matter if the video was ever finished--I'd gotten more than I could have hoped out of it.
In any event, it's there for a laugh, and maybe--just maybe--to be a reminder that A NIGHT AT THE OPERATION will be in bookstores April 7. I hope you like it, and so does Josh.
