89 Editorial’s Duncan Shepherd has teamed up with director Tom Krueger for a new video from the rock legends U2.

The video features U2 playing to a small crowd in an intimate venue in Somerville, Massachusetts. The Somerville Theater is known for being the first place the band originally played in the US. Kreuger shot the video on eight HD CAM cameras and four HDV camcorders in a freewheeling experiment designed to harken back to the days of punk rock, resulting in a variety of interesting, ever-shifting camera angles.

Shepherd and Kreuger worked closely to choose a grade for each camera to achieve various sorts of bleach bypass looks, giving them a set of dailies similar to the type of graded dailies of a traditional, film-shot music video. By utilizing multiple cameras in such a manner, the crew was able to tweak individual shots as they went along. In order to avoid the flat, unfilmlike finish that so often accompanies HD footage, Duncan edited the whole project on Final Cut Pro in HD format and used the program’s internal color correction to apply a more interesting look and feel to the dailies before commencing shot selection.

89 Edit’s East Coast Managing Director Sharon Lew notes, “Tom (Kreuger) did a great job capturing all the footage, and Duncan got to try out some interesting new editing techniques that are helping to transform us into a more efficient, dynamic studio.”

The process of editing the video was a watershed moment for 89, which was able to output a finished, uncompressed HD edit straight to the Smoke/Flame suite from a laptop using Final Cut Pro, rather than replicating all the work “online” at a later stage, saving time and money and allowing them to spend more time on digital cleanup. The crew found that, while there were still good reasons for editing many projects “offline” in SD, individual projects – like this U2 video – are ideally suited for editing with this new technology.

“Whether dictated by cost, time constraints, or simple creative realities, editors, directors and producers have a range of options open to them that previously were unrealistic or impractical,” noted 89’s Duncan. “The fact that all this power is available on set, or even in a field in the middle of Wyoming just shows that the way we’ve been editing all these years may be about to get a lot more fun. I wouldn’t say that I’ve made a total conversion yet, but, being a bit of a control freak, I like having the power to do the finish work, too, and this could get addicting.”

The Creds:
Artist: U2
Song Title: Magnificent

DP/Director: Tom Krueger

Post/Effects: Headlight
EP: Steve Holiner

Editorial: 89 Edit
Editor: Duncan Shepherd
Managing Director: Sharon Lew

Shoot Location: Somerville, Massachusetts

About 89 Edit:
89 Editorial, a bicoastal creative editorial & design company presents an award-winning editorial roster servicing leading advertisers and content creators worldwide at their state-of-the-art studios. The company, along with sister brand Headlight Design + VFX provides comprehensive servicing from rough-cut editorial through completion for TV commercials, music videos, emerging media, feature and long-format clientele. The two companies have collaborated on many notable efforts, most recently GEICO and Walmart for The Martin Agency, Olay for Saatchi and American Express for Ogilvy, NY amongst others.

www.89edit.com