Creative force comes in northern package
First Ani Kyd is going to do it, then Ani Kyd is going to teach you how to do it.
The northern B.C. performance artist is a music maker and a filmmaker. She has a half-dozen feature length movie projects in various stages of development, and she is also rolling the camera on six of her original songs.
These latter projects are as much instructional as functional for her compositions. She is compelled by the forces of music marketing to have videos for her songs, so why not, she wondered, use the opportunity to develop the videomaking industry in this region?
Kyd came to the Cariboo only a few years ago, drawn by love to the hamlet of Hixon a tad south of Prince George and an equal tad north of Quesnel. Once there she developed a love of the region and the local arts scene.
As a veteran of the Lower Mainland rock/metal industry and a longtime cinematic auteur as well, she couldn’t help but notice how overt the music skills were in this area but how limited the associated film skills.
It is growing, it is on the rise, and she wanted to play a part in demonstrating the possibilities. Her six-song video series is focused on leading by example.
“I’m doing a little bit of everything, just to show the different ways anyone can do a music video, and my goal – I’m succeeding so far – is to do all six videos on a budget of zero dollars,” she said.
The first two are already up and available for viewing. The most simplistic is the single Love Again. It got more than 600 views in its first week of YouTube life, and all it is is one stationary camera rolling through a single take.
“And it really was one take,” Kyd said. “It was cold out that morning so I pulled on my favourite toque, got the camera, turned it on, sang the song into the lens, and that was about it.”
The video for Paralyzed looks infinitely more complex, but she insists it was just a matter of planning and preparation. She assembled a cast of friends who were willing to be directed, she got a church for a setting and costumes for the characterizations, and when she said “action” it was a simple matter of executing on the plan to get a set of small scenes to cobble into a complementary story impression for the song.
“That one I shot in 45 minutes. Because I’m crazy,” she said. “And I edited it that evening. It was done by 11 o’clock that same night.”
She had Hannah Scarpino and the Merritt sisters – Kassy, Kendra and Kirsten – and their mother Val help out as the characters, plus do some of the behind-the-scenes work.
“They put on the Hixon Bluegrass Festival every year,” said Kyd. “Those were their own violins (seen as props, ironically being fakely played by people who know how to properly play them). Val is one of my best friends in Hixon; I love her and her whole family. The Hixon community blows me away, actually. People are so helpful and supportive of all my crazy dreams, and I want to help them right back again.”
For the next two videos she will travel to Los Angeles, where she was going anyway to attend the American Film Market Conference. She will be meeting with some of her film collaborators like Jello Biafra (of the band Dead Kennedys and political activism fame), Tim Russ (actor in Star Trek: Voyager, iCarly) and Ryan Wise (director of the documentary I Am Thor).
She will also make some music with songwriting collaborator Jimmy Roach, once a busy writer and arranger with Motown.
She and Roach have written together in the past and it was on their duet Don’t Cry that Kyd first realized how shooting a music video was a process she could teach the acts back at home, because she did that whole song guerrilla style.
“I shot and edited that whole video on my smart-phone,” she said. “The technology is right in your pocket. You already have the tools to do this. Technology is finally catching up to my creativity. I have more gear than a phone, but for the purposes of a local musician, including me, all you need is what you’ve already got on your iPhone, camera, laptop or your tablet. You do not need a big budget, you do not need special training at a school, just use what you have. I don’t want to sound like a Nike commercial, but it is so important to just do things. Don’t wait for all the right conditions. Don’t aim for perfect, aim for progress.”
Once a few more of the music videos are out in the world, Kyd will hold a meeting where musicians and aspiring filmmakers can talk together about everyone’s experiences making these songfilms, and how to make it more common. In the new world of global connectivity through cyberspace and social media, grassroots videos are becoming a basic requirement for even the most rooted of local performers.