Help, It Came from the 1980s!

As you can see from the music video I made back in 1989 (see videos below), my goofy video antics can be traced back to the decade known for synth-pop and unfortunate hair and fashion choices.

Remember those classic MTV music videos that featured movies clips spliced together with clips of a group performing their latest hit that was included in the movie. This is the idea behind this video for “One Step Away” by the now defunct group Benediction.

I had to produce a 30-min. TV show to air on local cable as part of my Advanced Video Production course. The show could be any format - talk/interview, news, sports, etc. - as long as it filled the 30 minutes. I decided to make an original scripted drama-edy called “Desire.” I wrote, directed and starred in the show that aired on local cable in Easton and Bethlehem, Pa., in March 1989.

A portion of the show featured Benediction performing their original song “One Step Away.” The group featured Steve Gilbert and Rab Sharpe (a.k.a. Rob Monkey) at the time of production.

The story behind “Desire” was this guy falls for a girl, but isn’t quite sure how to ask her out. One night, he’s sitting in a bar and a friend gives him a quarter to call the girl. He calls and they go out. They kiss, but as they’re kissing we see this was only a video production - none of this is real. When he’s finished editing the video, he runs into the girl and we see in “real life” she has a boyfriend. We also see that he really does have a crush on the girl, but there’s nothing he can do about it.

The video for “One Step Away” received two awards in our very own Lehigh Valley Video Festival, Best Editing and Best Videography.

I have a commentary about the video below that you may want to read after watching, but a couple notes before viewing. Yes, the video is supposed to have a blue tint, and yes I do all my own stunts.

I pulled a George Lucas and thought it might be cool to update the video and include a different music track.

Below, I offer you two versions of “One Step Away” – the 2007 version I replaced the music track a la’ Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon, and the 1989 version is the original video and music track with one small editing update. Enjoy the show!

One Step Away (1989)


One Step Away (2007)


Commentary - The Making of “One Step Away”
I suppose I could have done an audio commentary like they do on DVDs, but since the edits are so quick, I thought it would be best to include a written commentary.

When the video was first shown at the video festival, they thought there was technical problem with their equipment when the video appeared with a blue tint. I assured them it was OK and the blue was intentional.

The video was shot in Phillipsburg, N.J., Clinton, N.J., Easton, Pa., and the Northampton Community College (NCC) campus in Bethlehem, Pa.

The opening and bar scenes were shot at the ultimate dive bar in Phillipsburg, N.J. My oldest sister knew the guy who ran the bar and allowed us to shoot there. The book I’m reading in the opening scene is a dictionary, which is actually pertinent to the show “Desire” because it begins by displaying the definitions for “desire” and “passion.” I guess I’m just a romantic, what can I say?

Steve had this manikin that for whatever reason was part of their stage show. Many people thought we put stockings on the manikin, but that was only an accidental shadow across the manikin’s legs. I didn’t know what to do for a backdrop behind Steve & Rab performing in the TV studio, so I set up two portable 500-watt lights pointing up at them from the floor to cast shadows on the wall. I’m sure I saw this in a video somewhere. If you look closely, you can actually see an electrical cord plugged into the wall for one of the lights.

Timm Miller joined Benediction when I was putting together the music video. I shot some extra footage of them rehearsing in Rab’s basement and that’s Timm Miller with Steve in what looks like a hallway – that’s because it was a hallway outside the NCC TV studio.

My buddy Splatt-Man makes an appearance in the video – he’s the guy who gives me a quarter to call the girl. Later in the video, I return his quarter.

The lead girl in the video – I don’t even recall her name. I met her at a bar in downtown Easton. She knew my other sister who bartended there. I thought she was cute so I asked her to be in the video. I asked her out in real-life later, but that didn’t happen. I remember the night she first showed up at my apartment to shoot, she brought this big guy with her to make sure everything was on the up and up. Once he saw these couple dorky knuckle-heads with our camera and lights set up he left.

The other girl who pops up a couple times in the video was Allison. She was a friend of Rab’s and she plays my friend in the video.

There are out-takes from the production for “Desire” included in the music video. One scene Rab and I are standing next to the fountain in Easton and I’m actually pointing to the camera and telling Rab how we’re going to shoot the scene.

This was way before computer video editing. The blue tint and the candle were added after the entire video was put together. I ran the video through an effects process for the blue tint and the candle was put in live as it was recorded to another tape. I had another person bring in the candle from another switching console on the other side of the room, so there is one time where it comes up too soon and then re-appears. I decided to leave it in.

The scenes of me falling down the steps and running down a long hallway, I shot at the Foster-Wheeler (FW) building in Clinton, N.J. I worked security there from midnight to 8 a.m. I was there by myself most nights, so I set up the camera and did my thing. I added some effects later to make it look more like a dream. The shot of the camera moving down the long hallway, many people thought was done with a steady-cam. I ran down the hall and loosely held the camera trying to let my arm absorb the shock much the way a steady-cam works. Some people thought I threw the camera down the steps in one shot, but no, I just kind of flipped it around from ceiling to floor and back – the camera never left my hand.

Aside from the scene of Benediction performing in the TV studio, this was all shot on a VHS camcorder. The video was edited on the now “old school” 3/4-inch decks.

The first film I ever made appears on the wall in the scene where the girl and I kiss. We did three takes – one for the camera to go around in each direction and then one from above.

Rab also appears in my first film. He buys some drugs and then gets killed. This was shot in downtown Easton on black & white 8mm film.

Shots where the camera moves backwards and appears to be on some sort of dolly where done with an office chair with wheels.

The scene where I’m running after the girl outside, some people thought the girl was actually walking down the steps behind me. It’s not her, just someone walking down the steps.

In the original video, I thought it would be more realistic if I landed in the bed from my dream and then a second later woke up. In my thinking, that’s how it would really happen. Most people thought that it was just a bad edit, because it didn’t sync up. I updated it here for the first time so that I land in the bed and wake up in the same motion.

The shots of me falling just before I land in the bed I did by setting up the camera to point at the ceiling at FW and then proceeded to dive over it about four times and land on the floor – a cement floor with that thin un-padded office style carpeting. Yep, do my own stunt work.

The guy who plays the girl’s “real-life” boyfriend and the guy at the switching console were a couple guys in my class who I asked to help out.

One final note, in a scene that was in the opening of “Desire,” but was not included in “One Step Away” – I panned the camera across some building tops in downtown Easton and then brought it down to street level. In the finished production, I cut the scene just before the camera gets to street level. When I originally did that shot little did I know there were some dudes sitting on the steps who did not want to be on camera. They threatened to smash us and the camera. I managed to talk them out of any smashing and gladly still here to write about it.