creedible
the home stretch was longer, more frightening and absolutely disappointing than what I had imagined. I’m not having a “shattered delusions of grandeur” episode, but it would have been nice to get some credit, from the right people and some decent criticism about our work. All told we did 15 pieces of pre-produce. Over a months’ worth of work and thousands of dollars in production.
All of it seemed to be for naught. Ladies and gentlemen, the band —CREED. That’s right, multi-platinum recording, award winning and generally good musicians. Well, months ago…if you’ve been reading this journal…we proposed starting talks on what all of these concert visuals should be and what the nuances of them should entail. Months ago, I say again. It came down to us, my boss to be specific, figuring out what type of things we should have as visuals while Mike Ashcraft (www.mikeashcraft.com) and I worked out the details and effects for each piece. We worked storylines and pushed the limits of time available to make the world spin for these guys.
During rehearsals they scoffed at stuff, were mildly astounded at others and nixed the good majority of what we did…including a grand…I mean fucking grand…8 minute piece that ran syncronous with “who’s got my back”. The concept was simple but the images were astounding…I’ll post a link later.
All in all, the band confessed that they should have started a long time ago on getting ideas to us…which was the orginal idea. in fact, Stapp refused to return phone calls and emails about this…just blew it off. And, of course, when it came to watching what we created, it wasn’t what they wanted…
Let me put this in perspective instead of just a rant. Our company, dMedia is interested in emersing the audience in complimentary visuals for songs. We take great pride in the images matching the feel of the song and also trying to further, especially in Creed’s case, the mysticism and raw energy of the performance. I spent quite a bit of time out on the road with different bands and what seemed to come up in every conversation was, “how do we emerse the audience in our show?” The beginning is with audio, next lighting, but a whole new dimension is with video. Is is clean and broadcast-like, is it dirty and demented, is it mysterious or fantastic? Those same people who want their shows to be more look to those who do it best: Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel and Spinal Tap.
Okay, so the last one is a throw in, but it’s still a great film about the rock-n-roll pitfalls.
Back to Creed and the emersive experience….
They nixed anything that didn’t fulfill Stapp’s ego…hey, I understand, he’s the frontman…but shit, look at the big picture…see the world from outside your box.
It’s arguable that Creed doesn’t need a bigger show. Maybe their audience doesn’t give a rats ass about more visuals because they’re already given enough to look at. Perhaps the feedback on the Creed bulletin board is leading to something…the audience doesn’t care about visuals. They only want to see the band on those screens. If that’s the case then…well, okay…I still got paid.
It’s unfortunate, and I’m the only one singing this song –so I’ll sing it a bit louder, that a band of this caliber isn’t more media savvy…and if they are, won’t give much thought to what the audience might want for the show. Sad.
In conclusion, ladies and jellyspoons…I’m disappointed but just as I type that, there are two more bands breathing down our neck to give them a bigger show…a more emersive show.
more later…
