Cassady and Jasper - Time To Get Ill

Featuring: Cassady (14 months old) and Jasper (18 months old)
Date Created: August 31st, 2010
Music: Beastie Boys - Time To Get Ill
Camera: Canon Powershot
Software: iMovie

Abby - And She Was

Featuring: Abby (2 years old)
Date Created: August 17th, 2010
Music: Talking Heads - And She Was
Camera: Canon ZR40 Camcorder
Software: iMovie

Nicholas - Closer To The Heart

Featuring: Nicholas (1 minute to 3 days old)
Date Created: August 15th, 2010
Music: Rush - Closer to the Heart
Camera: Kodak Playsport
Software: iMovie

Cassady - Rockaway Beach

Featuring: Cassady (14 months old)
Date Created: June 30th, 2010
Music: The Ramones - Rockaway Beach
Camera: Canon Powershot
Software: iMovie

Cassady - Hello My Baby

Featuring: Cassady (14 months old)
Date Created: June 10th, 2010
Music: Phish - Hello My Baby
Camera: iPhone 3GS
Software: iMovie

Cassady - Bad Day

Featuring: Cassady (12 to 13 months old)
Date Created: May 17th, 2010
Music: R.E.M. - Bad Day
Camera: Canon Powershot, iPhone 3GS
Software: Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, and FantaMorph

Cassady - Knoxville Zoo (April '10)

Featuring: Cassady (13 months old)
Date Created: April 2010
Music: Tom Petty - Running Down a Dream
Camera - Canon Powershot
Software - iPhoto

Cassady - Sweater Song

Featuring: Cassady (11 months old)
Date Created: March 3rd, 2010
Music: Weezer - The Sweater Song
Camera: Canon Powershot
Software: iMovie

Cassady - Ridin

Featuring: Cassady (9 months old)
Date Created: January 11th, 2010
Music: Son Volt - Looking at the World Through a Windshield
Camera: Canon Powershot
Software: iMovie

Cassady - Force Sensitive Demo

Featuring: Cassady (about 8 months old)
Date Created: January 2010
Music: Nothing
Camera: Canon ZR40 Camcorder
Software: Adobe Premiere, After Effects

Cassady - Two Dollar Bill

Featuring: Cassady (6 months old)
Date Created: November 6th, 2009
Music: Kruger Brothers - Two Dollar Bill
Camera: Canon Powershot
Software: iMovie

Cassady - Never Go To Work

Featuring: Cassady (6 to 7 months old)
Date Created: November 7th, 2009
Music: They Might Be Giants - Never Go To Work
Camera - Canon Powershot
Software - iMovie

Cassady - Sugaree

Featuring: Cassady (3 and a half months old)
Date Created: July 23rd, 2009
Music: Grateful Dead - Sugaree
Camera: Canon Powershot, Canon ZR40 Camcorder
Software: iMovie, Adobe Premiere, and After Effects

Cassady - Bathtub Gin

Featuring: Cassady (11 weeks old)
Date Created: June 21st, 2009
Music: Phish - Bathtub Gin
Camera: iPhone 3GS
Software: iMovie

Cassady - Old Mother Reagan

Featuring: Cassady (11 weeks old)
Date Created: June 16th, 2009
Music: Violent Femmes - Old Mother Regan
Camera - Canon Powershot
Software - iMovie

We needed a short song for a few short clips and Old Mother Regan came to mind. Cassady was a spitter and it was good to document that in this video. I almost always rip out the audio when making these things (to avoid having to hear my redneck voice and people making fools of themselves trying to get a kid to do something) but forgot with this one. We ended up liking Patterson's "oh goodness" at the end so I kept it. The Violent Femmes' songs generally make for funny kid videos so expect more titles to be used in the future.

Cassady - Supernatural Superserious

Featuring: Cassady (6 weeks old)
Date Created: May 9th, 2009
Music: R.E.M. - Supernatural Superserious
Camera: Canon Powershot
Software: iMovie

Patterson and I were sitting around listening to R.E.M. in early May of 2009 trying to think of a good song to go with our footage of 6 week old Cassady. When we got to the "and you cried and you cried" part of this song we both looked at each other and immediately knew it was perfect. The little guy had a hard time putting on weight that first month and was just getting out of his "emaciated" phase when these clips were shot.

I got a little transition crazy making this into a rock video but I wanted it to be over the top! Despite the bad lighting at times, we had fun with it and still enjoy it more than the pictures that were taken during that period. I'm a huge R.E.M. fan and have always loved their videos more than anything else on MTV. You'll find my stuff heavily influenced by their work to the degree that I sometimes completely rip off their ideas.

Introduction

Welcome to Wilson Bros. Video! Here you will find videos of our sons Cassady and Nicholas. We've had some good reactions from friends and family over the past year or so to the videos we've made and posted to Vimeo and Facebook. I'm putting them on this blog in an attempt to archive them, provide some commentary, and sort of chronicle the boys' childhood. I have no delusions that any of these are anything more than very amateurish shaky cam videos set to copyrighted music. They are meant to be a little cheesy. Hopefully you will occasionally find something here that you find enjoyable though. We've certainly had a lot of fun recording our kids and being amateur music video producers!

I want to give some insight into the technical side of this little operation. We are rather low budget (and I'm sure it shows). Up until July 2010 most of the footage was recorded with a Canon Powershot digital camera. Thanks to our new Kodak Playsport pocket camcorder, we are now in high definition at least. Most of the editing is done on an iMac using iMovie. For relatively simple editing it's hard to beat that setup, mostly because clip management is seamless. I do play around with Adobe Premiere and After Effects when I have time and have incorporated work from those tools in a few videos. They are a pleasure to work with and I hope to do more with them as time goes on. Because there just isn't nearly enough time to do what I want to do, I usually go the quick and dirty route and use iMovie.

My plans with this site are to post each video we've made so far in chronological order providing some insight into what was going on with the kids at that time, what we tried to do, or what we learned from the process. Going forward, as new videos are made, I'll upload them to Vimeo then update this site with the embedded video. We would love to hear your comments, suggestions, or flames! Please keep in touch!

Cheers,
Brad