Blake Faucette

Huge thanks goes out to Rolling Stone for posting our Voices Against Amendment One video. You can see the story here. We are trying to make an impact in our community here in NC and a little national attention certainly does help.

Often Awesome The Series is nominated for a couple awards in upcoming film festivals. The first for The Webby Awards where we are nominated in the Documentary: Series category. It’s really an honor for us to even be competing with the likes of PBS and The Sundance Channel. The Webby Awards takes place on May 21st, 2012. They event will be hosted by Patton Oswalt and will be streamed live in HD. Get more info here. Next up, Often Awesome is nominated for a Vimeo Award. We are nominated in the Series category. Vote for us here. The Vimeo Awards take place on June 7th, 2012. Often Awesome The Series can be viewed in it’s entirety here

Download the single from iTunes

This was a lot of fun to shoot and edit. I’ve never shot a music video like this before which was a great learning experience. We actually recorded the music live at the venue while we were shooting the video. The mix sounds beautiful. The concept behind it was to document/shoot a music video. We had 3 cameras all Canon 60Ds and spread out across the floor. We covered Tom really well. The hardest part of the shoot was covering the piano and vibraphone players. Each take was a different solo, so unless we were recording them during that take it was impossible to show them playing. The vibes were easier to cover but he chose to use different color mallets (or whatever you call those things) and sometimes with 2 or 4.

It was a challenge but something that I’m glad I had a chance to do. It has been a long time since I’ve worked on or shot a music video that I wanted to do. I love this song and so glad I could work with the former lead of Squirrel Nuts Zippers lead Tom Maxwell. He is a very cool and fun guy to work with. I’m also very fortunate to work and be friends with a couple of North Carolina’s best filmmakers, Blake Faucette and Nic Beery. Enjoy this poignant Christmas music!

Recorded live on November 26, 2011 at The Murphey School, Durham NC

Tom Maxwell – vocals, guitar
James Wallace – piano
Mark Simonsen – vibraphone
FJ Ventre – string bass
Evans Nicholson – drums

Engineered and mixed by Thom Canova
Filmed by Andy Coon, Blake Faucette and Nic Beery
Edited by Andy Coon

Here’s the original video that Andy Coon and myself shot a little over a year ago and Andy recently went back and shot the how to video. Check them out and ENJOY! Happy Holidays!