The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/7/09 Section: Variety

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Quiet Hooves plays in a swimming pool - drums floating on a raft.

Allison Weiss finishes a song in Ben and Jerry's and is promptly handed an ice cream cone.

Hope for Agoldensummer plays on the roof of The Grit, using guitar straps the restaurant's owner made on the spot out of mop strings.

Nate Nelson and Cortright sing, "Is this powerful enough for you?" A siren in the distance seems to answer yes.

These are Soundies, the one-take, low-fi music videos that University alumnus Ethan Payne and senior Jason Miller make.

According to their Web site, the name comes from one of the first forms of music videos. Soundies were short musical films shown in bars and clubs on "video jukebox projectors" in the 1940s.

Payne and Miller were inspired by Vincent Moon, who films similar "Take-Away Shows" in Paris.

"It's not the first time someone took a band out and did something acoustic, but he [Moon] really popularized it," Miller said.

Before they began making Soundies, Miller and Payne contacted Moon, who encouraged their idea.

The two have been making Soundies for a little more than a year now.

"It's a more intimate, stripped down take on a music video," Payne said. "We try to bridge the gap between really glossy music videos and cell phone cameras at shows."

They begin the process of making a Soundie by contacting bands they are interested in.

"At first, it was just people we know and their friends," Payne said.

"It started out almost totally local."

More recently, they began making Soundies for bands from other cities who come to play shows in Athens.

They now contact bands through MySpace and through managers, publicists and record labels.

As they have become better known, bands have begun approaching the pair about making Soundies.

"It depersonalizes it to where you don't know what the band thinks," Payne said of working with managers and publicists.

"We're always used to the band being really into it."

As they progress, they hope to find sponsors so they can get better equipment, Miller said.

But, "then you have to worry about super cool bands thinking we're sellouts because we don't do everything for free," he said.

Continued...

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