📰 Written by Trevor H Smith.
📷 Photos by Eury Kutler @ratbatteeth
🎸 [A Music Monday feature] 🎸
When I met Josh Elavia, he was a guitarist taking classes with the same teacher as me, Greg Katana. We went to Music University in Freehold, New Jersey.
His band was pretty cool and I always liked his good energy. We remained friends for a long time. I got to visit him around New Brunswick when he was going to Rutgers.
Trevor’s First NB Basement Show
“I walked to the house. Walked around the back, following the sound of music. Bands playing and people funneling into the cellar door to see the musicians.
Sure, I was doing sound that night for him – but it was one of my first experiences of the New Brunswick basement show scene. It thrives there. I’d seen music thrive in other places. -This time though… it hit different.”
Music I’d seen in arenas, clubs, some of the coolest spots around Jersey and New York they couldn’t compare to this…
It had such a natural feel to it. A group of close knit friends experiencing together. The arts – the sounds – the lights – the atmosphere.
The basements heights were often just enough where you don’t hit your head but, the vibe was unmatched.
He had a band called Stillwells at that time. They were so cool. Josh sang in there with his bandmates. I enjoyed his voice and the energy.
I followed his band for a bit and – you know – we reconnected after some years and he had this project called Pocket Gum and I was starting to see some of their music and their page and he sent me the demos and I kind of fell in love with it I listen to this five song EP a lot I think multiple times and I was like man I can’t wait to do music videos for these because the songs are so good.
Well, one day eventually we did we did a music video together for song called wasted which was later release of theirs, but we had a great time making this because we really embodied a lot of the energy from the basement show seeing that I fell in love with and try to duplicate in my own home when I was still living with my parents.
So wasted had a very interesting story to it. I think that it would be noble to highlight some of the deeper subject matter into what went behind the song without alluding to too much detail. I will try to let you experience the video for yourself essentially, I’m thinking that it was a good thing we did it.
I saw a deeper dive into the normalization of alcoholism in young adults and how that can really catch up to people, and you know, surprise from underneath where people could fall into habits of alcohol and in doing so like damaging some of their own connections and losing some of their self in the process, we did intend to try and develop this into some kind of PSA near the end of the video to encourage people to find counseling and support for alcoholism, so I’ll take the place here in this article to do that if you or some of you that you know is struggling with any alcohol or substance issue. I think it’s important for people to know that there is a way out and there are resources for you and ultimately when you can see and realize that you do need support I think people will find those circles.
I had envisions with Josh a bit of the screenplay and the shot list and we build a treatment together. We had many late night calls trying to make this happen. I remember talking from like 10 to 3 in the morning with Josh and Kyle to really try and bring the story to life and I found that he was really creative and he respected the process, Josh.
& so when we finally got to the production weekend, we blocked out two days for it and we shot all of the morning scene on day one except for a pick up on day two in a bathroom scene and on day two we shot all of the basement show scene with the party group.
He was lucky enough to invite some neighbors over and they helped really fill in the space as well as their close friends and old bandmates. I had a great time lighting this I was able to use tungsten to illuminate the floor and we used a large GVMYU 200 R flood panel to throw light through some muslin to make a soft glow.
We dropped in some color accent lights amongst the drums in behind the amps. Through doing this, we were able to light this the way that we wanted to and really create like an immersive scene with the crowd.
After we had the crowd in there, we began to realize that it’s good that we used a large soft diffusion. It was similar size to like a 6 x 6 that we had created by clamping this cloth to the wooden floor joists overhead.
We utilized some Hollyland solidcom headsets also, we tried out the Hollyland Pyro transmitter, and also used the Hollyland Pyro monitor. We were extremely pleased with how this all played together and we were also able to set up an iPad as a remote monitor and it was through all of these things you were able to queue certain things to happen. We were able to queue Josh to enter the bathroom while I was waiting by the shower to shoot his scene at the bathroom sink, brushing his teeth with his beer.
Also we had in the front door outside a color tube that we set a red and blue police light to it and we were shown it through the front doors window to make it look like there was a situation outside to add a little bit of tension or curiosity into a scene as he begins to meander through the rest of the house.
We had set up some party lighting simulation inside the kitchen, and we also had simulated some pushing and fighting in the kitchen as well. We encourage people to wear costumes to try and bring everybody as outlandish and unique and weird as possible. We even went to the depth of that we had one a friend of theirs wear a clown outfit and he wore that outfit I think the whole day and we were trying to keep time with our shot list, but we got to him later and he was still in it, but he was a little burnt out, and he powered through and I absolutely loved his delivery.
We tried to queue him to make a strange Kubrick type of stare as he approaches Josh, and I think that it really polished a very suspenseful and strange ending to this and in our original, we had plans to create this into a loop where at the end of the night he’s throwing up and he passes out and he wakes up and the day starts over in a cycle, but I do believe that we brought it from A to B. I’m very proud of everybody involved. I’m very grateful that they brought us into this project and that we delivered.
Listen to Pocket Gum.
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