In Which I Am a Film Star in Hollywood

The Songwriter as Auteur? E.G. Phillips on a Malibu Beach while overseeing the video shoot for the L.A. Song

I have fallen woefully behind in my blogging about my Spring California Tour.  Suffice to say, I've been keeping busy.

Thursday was the designated day to shoot video for the "L.A. Song" — a song I wrote based on my experiences in L.A. last year while meeting up with my sister's family doing the pilgrimage to Disneyland and then a month later when I went to the ASCAP Expo music conference.  I made my second visit to ASCAP my deadline for finishing recording of the song and having it mastered.  I was lucky enough to meet through a friend from the San Francisco music scene one Daniel Button of Button Up Productions so I could shoot a video while in town.  We spent the day capturing footage on Hollywood Boulevard and Malibu and places in between,

Filming in Hollywood — I appear as a busker on Hollywood Blvd in the video for my song "The L.A. Song"

Rachel and Josh play a couple featured in the video.

Rachel posing in front of a Hollywood tour van parked next to her car that we decided to use as a prop.

I had a lot of fun working with Daniel and his assistant Carl as well as the actors, Rachel and Josh.  It was all done guerrilla style (there was some hiding of the camera under a conspicuously pink beach towel) with a fair amount of improvisation.  I enjoyed both stepping back and letting Daniel take the lead as well as jumping in a providing direction on some of the bits that I thought were important to capture, especially when we drove up to Malibu to film scenes for the first few verses of the song — which are really about some games my niece Faith and I were playing on Newport beach.  For the purpose of the video we are following the adventures of a couple who are still in the early phase of a relationship. 

Daniel attached a GoPro to the front on his car (and sadly lost a hat while he took some footage while leaning out the window) and we caught some of our journey from Hollywood to the PCH and then up to Malibu where we hit some tide pools and the beach.  We ran into another film crew while we were up there (they were a bit more official like).  If nothing else, it was fun day out and the best weather I could have hoped for for filming after some very gloomy and unusually chilly days in Los Angeles.  I'm looking forward to seeing the results.
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The Crew: Daniel and Carl

At the tide pools

Rachel, Josh and Daniel on the way to Malibu

The whole gang in Malibu, old school selfie style (it took a couple tries to get us all in frame)