By Dean Abbott Staff Writer

It may be long way from Dover to the Times Square studios of MTV, but two local men are hoping to bridge the distance. Mark Constance of Brentwood and Rick Pickford of Dover recently collaborated to help create a video for the Charms, a Boston-based band. They hope to see their work on the music network soon. When Rochester native Constance left for Los Angeles in 1989, he hoped to land a job working in the music business. He thought he’d like to make music videos, he said, but soon realized he had his sights set on the wrong industry.
"I didn’t realize making videos was a film industry job, not a music business job," he said. He got it figured out. In the 15 years or so Constance lived in L.A., he became a successful assistant director working on a number of productions, including "Terminator III," "Charlie’s Angels," and "Being John Malkovich."

In spite of his success, Constance maintained his fondness for New England, including an allegiance to the Boston Celtics. Once settled in Los Angeles, he sought a place to watch the team and found a local sports bar with a strong contingent of Boston fans.
One of those fans was Steev Riccardo. Constance and Riccardo became friends and maintained the relationship even after Riccardo moved to New York, and later, to Boston, where he eventually started managing local bands. Constance and his family moved back to New Hampshire in 2001. Once Constance was back in New England, Riccardo invited him to come to a club to see a band he was managing. That band was the Charms.
Riccardo was convinced of the band’s potential for success, Constance said. After seeing them, Constance was convinced, too, and set about writing scripts for a video for one of the band’s songs, called "The Wish Song." That project never materialized, but when the band’s second CD came out, Constance again picked up the idea of making a video for the Charms. Constance said he listened to "The Wish Song" again and again to develop the concept of the video for the quintet made up of lead singer Ellie Vee, guitarist Joe Wizda, keyboard player Kat Kina, a drummer who calls himself Prince Frederick and bassist called The Jackal.

The video mirrors the song’s theme of a woman’s desire for a man who has little interest in her. Two actors sitting on a couch in the area where the band is playing illustrate this theme. She seeks to capture the attention of the young man sitting next to her and fails. Prior to making the video, Constance had to assemble a crew. He needed someone to edit the video once it was shot. "Well," Constance said, "I thought of Rick Pickford." Constance called Pickford and asked him to do the editing. Pickford agreed and showed Constance some examples of his work. Constance was impressed by Pickford’s skill, so when in the days before the shoot the director of photography Constance had recruited became unavailable, he was glad to have the opportunity to bring Pickford on board as director of photography, as well. Pickford owns and operates WidgetPix, an industrial photography studio in Dover, where he mainly shoots products for advertisements.
A couple of years ago, Pickford decided he’d like to take his knowledge of light and his photographic expertise and begin applying them to moving pictures.
"I just kept my ears open," he said. "And eventually some customers asked me about shooting product videos." Pickford purchased a professional-quality video camera and, eventually, Apple’s Final Cut Pro editing software. In time, he was being considered for a job as production photographer, documenting in photographs the production of a movie, on the set of a small independent feature being shot locally.
Pickford didn’t land the production photographer gig. Instead the filmmakers asked him to be director of photography on the film, a major step up the filmmaking hierarchy. Of the Charms’ video, Pickford said creating its gritty, green-tinted look presented a few challenges for a photographer.

"I went to see the set and it was a dark, black basement," he said. The room is part of a recording studio and contains a control booth with a large window running along one wall. Pickford positioned one powerful light to shine through that window and another through the glass contained in a door to the room. He covered both lights with a green gel, a piece of plastic material that fits over the front of the light to alter its color. He also added a light mist of fog from a fog machine to catch and reflect the light in the room. The room was small — too small for Pickford to position the camera far enough away from the band to fully capture all five members in a single wide shot. To solve this problem, Pickford was forced to purchase a specially designed lens capable of shooting an extra wide shot without distorting the images at the edges.

While in Los Angeles, Constance had worked on a few music videos and found the sets to be chaotic places. He was determined to create an efficient, well-ordered atmosphere on this project. "We had meetings with all the crew members," Constance said. "We talked about every shot in advance." The video took more than 12 hours to shoot, but the process ran smoothly.
"From the very beginning, there was a synergy to this project," Constance said. In the end, Constance was more than pleased with the way the day progressed. "As far as my professional life is concerned, that was the greatest day of my life," he said. The video, which runs about 5 minutes in its final form, required shooting more than two hours of footage which Pickford edited down to its final form, approximately 300 carefully selected seconds. When the band finally saw the video, they loved it, Constance said, and were surprised by the professional results the team had achieved.
As the band’s manager, Riccardo is now preparing to send the video out to networks like MTV, VH-1 and others.

Constance said he eventually hopes to direct feature films, as well as more music videos. He also hopes to continue working with Pickford. The recently completed video, Constance said, will open up other opportunities for them all.

On the Web: www.thecharms.net;

www.widgetpix.com.

© 2004 Geo. J. Foster Company