I was introduced to Randal Arsenault by Darryl Swart who had worked with him on a number of projects. At that time, Randal was looking for a quick social media video for a competition. Due to the timeline, I could not take on the project but told him I really liked his talent and that we should work together in the future someday.

Fast forward six months and Randal sent me a new song he was working on called “Rock & Roll”. The song was still in the mixing phase and was rough, but I was enthusiastic about what I heard. The song had soul and spoke to me as an artist. One part, in particular, resonated with me:

“Someday I know I’ll be travelling to my grave, when I die please don’t cry, I’ll be rocking rolling all the way.”

— Randal Arsenault

This reminded me of how I believe a lot of artists feel about their work; they have faith that it will live on and help keep their spirit alive.

We met up and came to an agreement as to how I would help him market the single. The project would include;

Artwork and Creative Theme for the Project
Personalized Website
Music Video
Professional Photoshoot
Gig Poster
Short Promotional Video/Trailer

The first thing that I wanted to help brand was the name of the single. He currently had it called “Rock and Roll” but after consulting, we decided to change it to “Rock & Roll to My Grave” in order to separate it from the millions of other Rock and Roll titled songs.

For the branding, I really wanted to work with 100% black and white assets. I felt the song was a throwback from original rock and roll and the grittiness of the old school film look would serve the single well. Everything that has been posted during the campaign has been 100% black and white.

I created a themed gig poster feeding off the “grave” part of the song that I mentioned earlier. The idea of an amp built out of a headstonecame to me while coming up with the single artwork. Randal and I worked together to come up with the design that was not too over the top for his brand. My original idea had lightning and fire, I admit, it was a little too metal. I believe the “grave-amp” imagery is extremely powerful and refers to the artist’s work living on indefinitely. The poster will be sold on RedBubble and all proceeds will be donated to thecancer society at Randal’s request. He recently had a stint with cancer and the song speaks to it. It is a powerful story that needs to be told.

The music video was shot at an old ghost town, Dorothy, Alberta. I had shot some photos there a few years ago and the location has always stuck with me. The church is amazing and served as a perfect home for the project.

The whole music video was captured within 2.5 hours; 1.5 hours with the audience and then another half hour with just the band. It was a little rushed, but I feel the outcome worked out very well.

I used a Canon Mark IV and the 14mm 2.8 to capture be majority of true close ups and the 70-200 for the shots behind the crowd. All of the footage was captured at 24fps and colour graded using Adobe’s amazing lumetri colour plug-in. The sound effects were recorded with a Zoom H4 and the band played along to the song using a “”Monster Power Speaker””.

The single artwork was captured after we shot the music video. Randal and I took a few hours afterwards to capture some press shots and other assets for the video that included the intro.

Squarespace was used for a web host and CDBaby was utilized to distribute the single. The music video was hosted on YouTube to maximize views and reach.

This project has been a pleasure to work on and I can’t wait to continue to collaborate with other artists. Randal is an amazing musician who has a powerful story.