Matt Davis - I Turn To You (The Making Of The Music Video)

It all started with a visit from my nephew, Matt Davis, who came to visit me for a few weeks this past February.    His mother (my sister Sue) tells me I'm one of his favorite uncles, and after losing his job for making a simple mistake, she thought it would be good for him to get away from NJ and visit me in FL to get his mind off of things.  He was looking forward to taking advantage of my recording studio (LauberLand Studios) and had some visions of writing and recording a song while he was here.

Matt is a young 21, and I agreed it would be fun to have him down to visit.  Since I have other family here, we really didn't have the entire 3 weeks to hang out, but we did have plenty of time, or so we thought!  I picked him up at the airport and drove to Deltona, where I live, just outside of Orlando, FL.    I live with my wife, Kelly and lots of doggies.  Kelly is the somewhat-well-known "Yorkies By Kelly" and is a one of the best at raising Yorkies under foot.  I am a musician and have a recording studio set up in the garage.  We showed Matt to his room, and we just hung out and relaxed the first day or two, mainly stuffing our faces and watching movies.

Matt Davis

We then began to migrate into the studio to see what might come of it.  We messed around with some chords and talked about ideas.  He gave me a few ideas about what he wanted, but we were lacking subject matter for the song, and had no idea at this point that there would even be a video at all.   After trying to be creative for a couple days in a row, nothing was clicking, and sometimes that just happens.   I asked Matt to think hard and come up with an idea for what the song would be about.  I gave him some examples, but we were having no luck at all.  I told him to sleep on it and come up with something and we would start from there.

Uncle Dave Lauber

The next day I called Matt into the studio and asked him if he came up with anything.  He said he was unable to think of anything, and flashing back to the days when I was much shorter-tempered, I got a little pissed off to say the least.  I told him it was not that hard, and we had a heated moment and then he left the studio and went to his room.   I was angry because I felt he wasn't really putting any effort into coming up with an idea, so I decided to show him that it wasn't that hard to do by knocking out a song in 10 minutes. (Yes, I know, I am well-aware I am still a bit immature for 49, but very passionate about anything music).   So, I wrote a song, in 10 minutes, chords, lyrics, and the works.  I then quickly texted him from the studio and said "your song is done, come and sing it!"

LauberLand Studios, Deltona, FL

He thought I was joking, but he came back into the studio.   I showed him what I had written.  He said he liked it!  The song was a fictional story about a guy and a girl who had been dating for years, but started to fight more and more often.  During the past year the fights worsened, and the guy fell out of love with the girl, although he still cared about her.   He made a mature decision to break up with her so that she could find someone who could offer her true love, and she decided to move out and leave him.  The song pretty much stayed the same as written, but Matt changed the melody from the obvious melody that I wrote to a whole new feel and that seemed to bring the tune up to date and make it much more current.

We began to record the song right away, and by the next day it was recorded (mostly because it was a simple acoustic song with a few vocal tracks).  We listened to our work, and the more we listened, the more we agreed that it actually came out much better than expected.   We were happy with our collaboration, and we were already laughing about the tension that caused the song to be written in the first place!

Over the next week or so, Matt went to the west coast to stay with other family members.  While he was away, I gave the song a few more listens.  I started to realize we might be on to something that people could really like and enjoy.   Everyone I played the song for either loved it or lied to me!   Soon after, I began to get visions of making a music video for the song.  I took advantage of Matts time away to come up with a story board for the video, and mapped everything out down to the exact shots for each part of the song!  I should mention I had never done anything like this before, and that made it very exciting and very difficult at the same time.  The storyboard took nearly 2 days to come up with, and I remember I had to finish it after I picked up Matt from the train station.

Storyboard for Matt Davis - I Turn To You

Now the next step was to find a leading lady, or co-star for the music video.  Who would play the part of the girl?  Hmmm, lots of girls started flashing through my brain, but I knew she had to be very pretty for the video to get noticed.   I only had two days before I had to pick up Matt and then a day and a half before I drove him to the airport.  Wow, not much time to pull off a music video, but I was determined.  I was sitting at a local Beef O' Bradys when I noticed the hostess was a young and pretty brunette about Matt's age.  I asked her if she was interested, and she said yes.  I gave her my CP number and told her to call when she got off her shift.  This might have seemed more strange if my wife wasn't with me, but she never called anyway.  The next morning we were sitting at Mel's Family Diner in Sanford, FL talking about how we would go about finding an actress on short notice, when one of my favorite waitresses (Kelli) overheard us and reminded me that her daughter, Heather, was an actress and model.  I had already seen pics of Heather, and I knew she would be just perfect if she would agree to do it, which she did!

Heather Jakubcin

Wednesday came quickly, and Kelly and I drove to the train station to pick up Matt.  On the way back to our house we explained the time would be limited, and we'd have to get up early on Thursday to begin shooting at various locations around Sanford and Deltona.  He was up for the task and we crashed early to get some rest, or at least he did!  I had to stay up to get the camera and storyboard and props ready.  This was not going to be easy.  I was about to be director, videographer, makeup artist, and everything you see in the credits of a movie short wrapped into one person, and squished into a day and a half, plus I had to do it on just a few hours sleep!

Thursday morning, and 6am came pretty early.  Matt was up, but grouchy in the morning and not quite as excited as the day before.  We loaded up the van and headed to Sanford's downtown historic district.  We decided we could work better on a full stomach, so we stopped into The Colonial House Restaurant for some breakfast and coffee.  After breakfast we headed over to the riverfront of Lake Monroe to shoot some footage.  We used a small CD boom box to play the audio loud enough for Matt to lip sync to.  I was using my Sony HD Handycam and a tripod to get most of the video shots.  I quickly learned Matt was kinda shy, and wasn't feeling so good about shooting in public in front of people, which is understandable if you have never done it.  We basically waited for cars and pedestrians to go by between takes before shooting the shots, so it all worked out.

We headed out to a few other places and then waited for Heather and her mother Kelli to meet up with us to get the Yorkie shot on the swing.  My wife, Kelly, was standing by with "Ru", one of her "Yorkies By Kelly" doggies and met us at the location, as well.  We took some shots and decided we were all hungry.  I'm starting to see a pattern. Dang, we sure do eat a lot!  We all headed back to Beef O' Bradys in Deltona, since it was just down the street from my studio where the rest of the scenes would be shot.  Matt and I had already gone to several locations before we met with Heather and got the rest of the outdoor footage.  We still had to take all the inside and green screen shots.

L to R: Heather, Kelli (Heather's mom), Kelly (my wife) and Matt

After a nice lunch, we all headed back to LauberLand for the real work.  We decided to get the green screen shots out of the way because we would have to shoot in the dining room later and that's where I usually shoot the green screen video.  The green screen allows us to remove the background later and replace it with effects such as the black and white swirl effect used in the video.  Everything was going as well as expected and we were all having the time of our lives.  The chemistry was perfect, and Matt and Heather were so natural together you would have thought they'd been dating for years!

Heather and Matt during green screen shoot at lauberLand

 We continued shooting video until almost 10pm, and we were all exhausted!  We called it a day, and Heather and her mother Kelli took off.   I told Matt to get some rest, because we still had to shoot some footage in the studio the next morning before we drove him to the airport.   We got some rest, and the next day we shot the parts where Matt was playing guitar and singing into the microphone.  I must say he did a great job, and he learned to play all the guitar parts I had written in just about an hour so that he could play them in the video!
After the last shots were finished, we literally had about an hour to get him packed and on the road to the airport so he could fly back home to NJ!  Talk about cutting it close!  It was a great adventure for both of us.  I then took the next few weeks to edit the footage and create the video.  You can see the video below, and be sure to watch in HD and comment on YouTube if you can!  We are proud of our work given the circumstances, and especially since it was our first music video we made, I think it came out pretty good and we learned a lot about the process, too..
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Matt Davis - I Turn To You (starring Heather Jakubcin)