On Sunday, May 23, Canyon Records staff traveled to Gates Pass west of Tucson to spend three days on a video shoot featuring  four songs from R. Carlos Nakai, William Eaton and Will Clipman’s Dancing into Silence. Stephen Butler, the producer/director for the project, and I had gone ahead to scout locations and shoot test footage. Sunday afternoon we showed R.C., Will Clipman and the Canyon staff the three shooting sites.

Monday morning we are onsite at 4:00 a.m. moving equipment  uphill through the desert in absolute darkness. Using glowsticks I marked the trail through the cacti (jumping cholla is the worst to encounter) and up slopes covered with loose rock. Everyone wore a headlamp. The view from the road was eerie: a line of colored lights snaking up an unseen hill with bobbing white lights (headlamps) indicating where Canyon staff was moving equipment up the trail

The artists showed up at 4:30 a.m. with William Eaton driving through the night from Cottonwood, Arizona (about five hours)  to arrive on time. The morning was windy which made use of the crane difficult, but we covered our footage for one song. We finished about 10:30 a.m. (light is not good for shooting after this time). At 3:00 p.m. we were at our second site (not shown in the video) for sunset shooting. We are off the evening shoot about 9:30 p.m. after covering our footage for a second song.

Everyone worked long, hard hours, but expressed they’d rather be there than back at the office: Alexis Santos, Kathy Norris, Jack Miller, Jeff Nagy (of Nile Graphics) and his son Alex, and, of course, R.C., William and Will who were very patient while we set up shots and dealt with technical issues. I also owe thanks to the staff who kept the office going while we were on our campaign in the desert: Marty Butler, Kristen Butler and Lisa Minker.

Check back for the second part of our on-location video for Dancing into Silence.

Don’t miss the snake attack.