Satch – Production Notes

I’ve known Satch for a long time. I first met him when we recorded and early “Songwriters in the Round” show in 1992. He performed a song of his called “I Am Not a Priest” and I thought he was great. 

https://marksteeleproductions.com/satch-kerans-and-bill-jenner

Ruthie and I would go out and see Satch and his band, The Catalinas, around Salem and the North Shore. We’d always say hello and that’s the way we knew Satch.

Then I started shooting my series, “RESONANCE” and I asked Satch if he’d like to record one and he did. He’s a thoughtful songwriter and performer.

https://marksteeleproductions.com/satch-kerans

Then recently Satch contacted me to see if I would be interested in a project he had in mind for a new song he had written. “Chantel Changed Their Name”. He sent me a rough mix and I liked the song. It was about a transgender youth and was good Rock n Roll. Now I’m as aware as the next (74 year old) guy about transgender people but it isn’t something that I cross paths with very often in my life. So I said I’d do it. The first thing I had to learn was the title is Chantel Changed Their Name, not Chantel Changed Her Name. The pronoun Their has replaced Him, Her, He, She for a lot of people. That’s OK so “their” is singular now. 

The production of the video was made more simple due to the fact that I wouldn’t be recording or mixing any audio. We were going to use the mixed track that will be on his new album. 

Just a side note here: 

The term “album” seems old fashioned but I think that it is still relevant because it is a collection of songs so it’s an “album”. It isn’t a record and it isn’t a CD so we need to call it something. Just like “their” and “she” we need to reshape how we think of these things to fit the new order.

I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do to shoot Satch performing the song but I needed something else to make the video more interesting visually. In the song he mentions the group meeting at Dusty’s Pool Hall so I asked Satch if he knew of the pool hall in Gloucester that we could shoot at. He came up with Pratty’s Bar in downtown Gloucester and we could meet there at 11am and it wouldn’t be too busy and we could shoot at the pool table. That sounded good so when the time came I drove up and went in Pratty’s. There were already a couple of patrons having an early lunch at the bar and the bartender asked me if he could help me. I told him we were going to shoot some video at the pool table and he said “Fine.” I asked if he knew Satch and he said “No.” I asked if he knew that we were going to be shooting there and he didn’t know that either but it was OK with him. I had already decided that I wanted to shoot the pool hall stuff using my iPhone because I had a nifty new app I wanted to try out and I kinda wanted that handheld look. When Satch showed up we went over and shot for a half hour or so and got enough shots. When we left we put everything back the way it was and I gave the bartender a twenty dollar bill, for which he was very happy, and we were out of there. $20 to shoot on a location was a very small price to pay. Everyone at Pratty’s was welcoming to us and it was another slice of life I don’t see. Many years before around 1974 or so I drove a small beer delivery truck around Kingston, NY as a job while I was going to school at SUNY New Paltz. During that time I saw people who had their breakfast at the bar and instead of coffee they’d have a beer and a shot. It isn’t a life I recommend but like the people at Pratty’s, they were always welcoming to me.

We went back to Satch’s house and shot him lip syncing to the rough mix up in his studio on the 3rd floor. I used my 3-axis gimbal and my Lumix S-5 with a wide angle lens to get the shots. We went through the song 3 times so I could get a wide shot, a medium shot and close up shots. That all went pretty well and the shots look good. In the future I think I’ll forget the gimbal and just use the image stabilization built into the camera and the lens. One is a mechanical stabilizer and the other is an electronic stabilizer. When used together and with the camera on a double handle to make it easier to hold I actually have more control than I do with the gimbal. The gimbal tends to have a mind of its own and can be unpredictable. Before I left I asked Satch to talk to the camera and tell me about the song and why he wrote it.

When I got the footage home it was pretty easy to put together. Satch nailed the intro and then marrying the three takes of the song and editing it took about 2 hours or so. Then I could sit back and watch it and make changes. I made the performance footage Black and White, I tried adding a little color while keeping it washed out and I didn’t like that, the B/W was better. I tried chroma keying in the butterscotch Telecaster in the B/W image and that seemed too gimmicky so I kept it with the intro in color and the song in B/W. I added in a few shots of the pool room at Pratty’s, they worked well, but the video still needed something more. It needed some shots of a transgender youth. I don’t know any. I know someone who I think has a transgender child but I wasn’t going to ask him. I have a couple of neighbors who like to dress up in women’s ballgowns and prom dresses but I don’t know them and that isn’t really what I’m looking for anyway. Other than that I was drawing a blank. Then I Googled “Transgender Youth” and got a few videos. Most were not what I was looking for but I did find one. It was a short film by a Brazilian film maker named Hugo Lins, the film is named “Transa” and it was perfect for what I needed. 

I’m very careful these days to not use other people’s copyrighted material without permission. I did however capture the film and cut a few pieces of it into my video. I searched for contact info on Hugo and was unable to reach him. The more the clips from his film sat in my video the more I felt that they were perfect and I had a dilemma. I searched on Youtube and found had had a YT page and had a few videos up on there. Transa was one of them. In the comments I told him about my video and asked if I could use a few clips. I didn’t hear back. I commented on the other videos he had posted and asked him to contact me. NOTHIN’…

After a few weeks and while Satch and I were waiting for the final mix of the song to be done I finally heard from Hugo and he is very happy that I want to use the clips and I, in turn, am happy to give him credit in my video. So I’m relieved.

Here is a link to his film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxqGlCoUnGw&t=344s

And here is a link to my video of Satch:

https://marksteeleproductions.com/satch-chantel