Our production with ZoneZero
If you've been along for the ride with JECP for any amount of time, you've heard us preach the importance of relationships (Impact of Relationships Blog HERE). This isn't just some random buzzword focus for our marketing. It's a huge core value and stems back from our origination as a brand. We are a people-focused company internally and externally, understanding that the best relationships allow for more trust and long-term quality building. This entry highlights our recent project with Zone Zero, which stems from the second music video we ever produced.
For us, we start every project on the human level. Do we like each other? Are we a good fit? Do we understand each other's goals, strengths, and working opportunities? From here, we can start designing a project together. This first hurdle usually takes time and effort from both parties but truly is the foundation and indicator for our best projects.
Zone Zero is a culmination of past bands we've worked with, including Former, GR& and The Beast in His Image. We've worked with all these bands in some capacity, and they have all been influential in JECP's growth. We never view or position ourselves as the partner who serves the brand but help every artist understand their success and contribute to our success. Every great project we produce contributes to the success of their project and JECP reputation. This understanding helps both parties see the mutual buy-in and care for the project at hand. We have no ego in our craft. We see ourselves as professionals who aid artists in building the best project with us.
One of our first music videos that launched our career was with The Beast and His Image (TBAHI). We were far from pro's back then, but TBAHI gave us creative liberty and trust. Once we got a taste of how much their fan base supported them, we decided to dive in deeper than the music video for Statera Facta. This project helped form one of our foundational approaches to relationship and value giving by offering promo photography and doubling down on the strategy. We shot many photos and got to know the guys (Knox + Mike). For our projects, we earned their trust, and although the project parted ways, we all kept an eye on one another.
In a huge transitional period for JECP, we crossed paths with a band called GR&, which introduced us to Jordan. At the time, we were in a newer phase and trying to level up our production process, experience, and team. We started approaching meetings differently, and GR& was the first of a few artists to give us a big shot to produce higher-level productions. Earning their trust was very informative to how we started conducting ourselves and being more transparent with our desires and positively impacting a project. Unfortunately, this project never saw the light of day, but it did earn us trust and authority with Jordan.
As we've progressed over the years, one area has always been a massive focus on our quality, innovation, and uniqueness, our care for lighting. We view lighting as a character that lends itself to art direction, tone, and exciting visuals. A few years back, Johnny's previous band, Former, brought us onto an ambitious project for Burn in Hell. To this day, we've never done anything nearly as ambitious as the light programming and motion control for that project. At its core, it's a simple performance-based music video, but they gave us a chance to do something drastically different. It was a fun production that felt like a fun hangout.
Years later, these guys got together and formed Zone Zero, which caught our attention and made our JECP playlist. After a bit of time, we finally nailed down this project, and we wanted to do something cost-effective, visually fun and set up a project we could all have fun on together.
We tailed our 2020 with this production and treated it like a production hangout for our crew and the ZZ guys. We produced a film for both Grey and LMR, so we needed to keep the creative simple and fast-moving for a tight schedule. These are some of our favorite projects because it lets us focus on the band's performance as the core and give the b-roll a more experimental and easy-going effort. Lighting and color played a significant role in Grey, and we got experimental with frames rates at both 24fps and 12fps, which was a shutter drag effect we thought played well with his nu-metal group.
LMR, we referenced the original music video in terms of lighting color, strobing, and blends of blue from the strobe. We tackled the movement more modern and simplistic with layered positioning and a full circle motion, which may have been a nod to our working relationship. We love easter eggs and being intentional more than doing something extravagant.
This production truly felt like a hang session that we happened to shoot cool music videos in the process. Overall, this is the feeling we love to create. While as creatives, we can care a lot about the gear or technical aspects, we ultimately want production to be fun. This year, we are doing our homework, prepping our projects better, and making the production process fun and laid back as humanly possible. We're taking extra care to creative and what makes working with us extraordinary. It's the relationships we form, the transparency we provide, and the fact that we build projects together.
For the artists who have been on the fence about a video, I encourage you to find a director who is willing to understand your brand and cares as much about the video as they do the relationship. We aren't the perfect fit for every artist, but the artists who want a team and people who care for more than the video are our peeps. We're always grateful when artists come to us wanting more than a video. We love it, even more, when a friendship blooms and we building something long-term. 2021 has a lot of exciting things in the pipeline. ZoneZero is one of many awesome clients who have been providing us energy and excitement.
Below are both films we produced. This project is an example of our popular Two-a-day package
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