Clips and Trailers


The Movie Musical Trailer

 

 

WARNING:  Some material may not be suitable for children.

“Fuck! Shit!”

This is the fourth original song (of an entirely original score) featured in Welcome to Harlem.  Centered around a group of young artists living on the block, this scene in particular is an anthem to how difficult life can be for many creatives and non-creatives alike as they struggle to get by…

 

 

“Theater Major”

This is an actual clip from the film!  It features roommates Marty and Troy, experiencing a typical evening in apartment 66…

 

WARNING:  Some material may not be suitable for children.

Trailer #1 — September 2011

Two months before our grand premiere at the Apollo Theater and with the film well on its way to completion, we were finally able to put together our first official trailer using footage from the film!  Its success was no doubt one of the main reasons we were able to attract more than 700 fans to the Apollo, and some of the editing techniques used were even the inspiration for some of the techniques eventually used in the final feature length product.  The tag line at the end of the trailer, “bring your dancin’ shoes, bitch!”, has become one of the most “classic” lines from the film, and continues to attract the attention of friends and fans from around the globe.

 

 


Teaser #3 — February 2011

Teaser #3, shot on February 5th, 2011 (only 6 weeks before the start of production), again gave us the opportunity to try things we had never tried before.  It was our first shoot following our “Neighborhood Auditions”, allowing us to work with all of our newly cast neighborhood characters.  It was also our first experience shooting at night and our first using a “steadi-cam”, both tactics that we were hoping (and luckily able) to utilized several times throughout the shoot of our full feature.  Most directly, teaser #3 was the inspiration for our “Friday Night on the Block” scene in Welcome to Harlem, easily one of the most revered scenes in the film.  It wasn’t until teaser #3 that we really began developing a strong shooting relationship with our block and our community, a relationship that without, we never would have been able to accomplish all that we did during production and with the film as a whole.

 

 

Teaser #2 — December 2010

Filmed over two days on December 5th and 6th of 2010, Teaser #2 gave us the opportunity to try several things we had yet to have any experience with.  It was fresh off of the casting of most of our lead cast members, allowing us the opportunity to work with them for the first time.  It also allowed us to plan for our first multi-day shoot, our first multi-camera shoot (two different RED cameras and crews), and to work with a much larger cast and crew than we had ever experienced.  We also used this as an opportunity to get into the recording studio for the first time, recording live our first of many tracks, several of which made it past the teaser trailer and into the actual feature length film.  One of the great benefits was that we were able to strategize and prepare for the full production, using the actual actors, music segments and locations we would need be utilizing in March and April.  One of the other big goals for teaser #2 was to familiarize ourselves with different editing techniques and usage of music, such that we could develop and tell an interesting story over the course of five minutes without any real semblance of plot.  Teaser #2 remains our most viewed of all of our teasers.

 

Teaser #1 — October 2010

Our first teaser trailer–and our first time filming anything as a team and on our block–was shot on a very memorable October 4th, 2010.  All of the filming was done over the course of one day in four different “locations” on our block.  Through filming the teaser we were able to gain experience using the RED camera, organizing a shoot day in the neighborhood, composing a full music track and putting a video piece together through all stages of production.  One of the main creative goals of the teaser was to get a feel for how we can effectively combine footage with music to create an emotional response.  Though the actual music used in Teaser #1 is not in the feature film itself, it is the basis for where the Welcome to Harlem “theme music” originated.  Teaser #1 was and remains many of our fans’ favorite of all of our trailers.