Re: Brad Sundberg seminars: Making Music With Michael Jackson
Latest from Brad:
Behind The Scenes
I was scrolling through my FB timeline this morning and someone posted the behind the scenes footage of the "In The Closet" Herb Ritts short film with Naomi and Michael. Like many of those projects I was there for much of it, but behind the scenes.
By the time the Dangerous project was winding down I was juggling a lot of things. We had projects rolling full speed at Neverland (I seem to remember the Sea Dragon and Zipper were installed around that time), plus I was working with Bruce, Bill and Teddy in the studio wrapping up the album. That of course meant short films and tour prep were either beginning or just around the corner.
Michael loved a large, portable music playback system I built for him to use on the short films (I have written about it before), but essentially it was an estimated 20,000 watt monster that would and could "hurt you" if you weren't careful. Michael wasn't careful. At all.
Hurt me!! Hurt me!!" he would yell as we set the system up for shooting "Ghosts", "2Bad", "Closet", etc. The volume this thing produced could send even the most jaded, know-it-all production person into the craft services ("Crafty") snack tent to roll up some napkins and stuff them in their ears. I loved it.
I didn't spend a lot of time on the "Closet" shoot for two reasons.
First, I wasn't in the union, so I couldn't actually operate my own system - it had to be handled by a union guy. I just set it up, tuned it, made sure Michael was happy and handed over the keys to the union guy.
Second, and you might find this odd, but Michael had put my family and I up in a really nice resort in Palm Springs, and we loved the idea of a few days of down-time, so I spent much of that time poolside, knowing that I might have to drive to the set if my system needed attention. It didn't, so I relaxed much of the time.
Production shoots were always much more intense than working on the albums. There were people everywhere, with lots of radios and clipboards (this was before iPads) and laminates and stopwatches. Security guys guard every entrance with their official windbreakers and Security baseball caps.
Rows production trailers, dressing rooms, star trailers, honeywagons (bonus points if you know what they are), generators, catering trucks, lighting trucks, lighting guys, sound guys, set guys, safety people, production assistants (PA's), craft services, etc. Shooting a Michael Jackson film in Southern California is like moving, organizing and paying for an army - and they can do almost anything once they are assembled.
So again, it was interesting, but the layers and hierarchy of people and who could stand where and when and why and made my pool and a bottle of Corona really inviting on most days.
In flipping through some photos, watching the behind-the-scenes footage of Closet, etc., I stumbled on the photo of Michael with his flashlight in the studio. This photo always makes me smile.
The comparison of an MJ short-film production, as I just described, to a typical day in the recording studio is pretty funny. On most days in the studio there might just be a handful of people. If we weren't recording any musicians or strings that day, it might have just been six or eight people in the whole building during the Dangerous project. That number would mysteriously double at dinner time.
Wayne and Marcus (Michael's security guys) might come and go through the day, and we might have a guest now and then, but most of the time it was just a handful of us, and the mood was typically very focused, yet light and low-pressure. We knew we had a lot of work to do, but it wasn't frantic in any way.
In the summer in Southern California it was not uncommon for huge parts of the city to experience what became known as rolling "brown-outs". This meant your power might dip for a few seconds as so many air conditioners were kicking on, and it was some way for the power company to manage the flow of power. Sometimes the power went out completely, which of course is a "black-out."
A black-out in a studio is particularly fun because there are no windows. Studios very rarely have windows to help with soundproofing and to help exhausted team members not get too depressed over missing beautiful day after beautiful day while working on an endless album project.
This particular black-out lasted quite a while, and we dug out some flashlights for people to use, including Michael. He bundled up in his parka (it was not cold inside!), and thumbed through some of his art books in the dark, basically amused by the whole thing.
The funny thing is that it would be very rare for a black-out to occur on a production set because all the power is provided by huge generators. But if a delay does hit a big shoot, radios are lit up with production assistants wanting updates, accountants on the verge of tears watching their costs, mount, union guys taking naps, etc.
In the studio, we simply removed the tapes from the machines via flashlight (you don't want a Michael Jackson master tape snapped when the power returns), and found places to relax for a bit. It was just simple down time - not a bad thing.
Michael never complained - he knew there was nothing anyone could do, so we just sat it out. The album would get done when it got done.
In less than two weeks we'll be in Austin, Texas sharing stories and music about my 18 years of working with Michael. In four weeks we'll be in Mexico City, and in six weeks New York. There won't be any stressed out production assistants, nor is it likely that you will need a flashlight or a rolled up napkin in your ears to endure the volume, but you are invited to spend a day with behind the scenes, In The Studio With MJ.
Orlando and LA are slated for June, and we are looking at Brazil for July.
Hear things you have never heard.
See things you have never seen.
Learn things you never knew.
In The Studio With MJ. Will You Be There?
www.inthestudiowithmj.com/events
