Recently I was contacted by an old friend who wanted me to go and film one of his DJ sets and make a promotional video. Like most things in my life I was extremely unorganized and late to his gig, I also had to borrow my housemate’s old Falcon to get to the party he was playing at which was out in Lockwood South.

What he didn’t tell me was that in this instance it was actually a girl’s 18th too (although the man has other gigs coming up in Melbourne). So after rocking up, walking around awkwardly for a bit, explaining to some guy who I was and why I was walking around a random girl’s 18th with a camera (fair enough too) and then getting coerced into taking a few group photos by some drunk 16-year-olds, I finally got up behind the decks as Limendra pumped out his set.

The challenge here for me was to try and get shots I thought would stand out and be editable into something more or less not shit on my part. Between filming a bunch of drunk teenagers dancing and filming Limendra himself and the decks and then occasionally mixing it up with combining both elements into the shot, I really didn’t have much of an idea what I was doing and my Olympus EM10 isn’t the best camera for low-light environments. However I got what I could before driving onwards to Bendigo to meet up with another friend later in the night.

In the process of editing now, between shots of the crowd and Limendra himself it’s hard to keep the video going without it becoming stale and repetitive. I’ve relied on a simple animated logo (which I’ll have to now change and update on request) and some sound effects at the start to draw people in. And as I edit the rest of this I plan on using colour grading and other effects to make the content more interesting. Although I plan to go and film at least one other of his gigs in Melbourne in order to get more footage and variation to work with.

Watch the beginning of the first edit here