Interviewing Jason Verlinde: Telling moving stories of musicians with audio and video
Jason Verlinde is the publisher and cofounder The Fretboard Journal, a print magazine and website. He lives in Seattle, Washington. FJ speaks to musicians and music lovers who appreciate beautifully presented stories about musical people and events. In this interview, Verlinde answers questions posed by Ellen Audley, a pre-journalism major at Colorado State University. He discusses FJ’s audio and video processes, staffing, philosophy, and equipment. He describes some of the magic moments he savors from the years of capturing the moving stories of musicians, luthiers and gear makers in an often eclectic world of acoustic and electric stringed instruments.
Q: What drove your video department (looks like it’s still just you?) to grow from you taking an editing class (as mentioned in the Seattle Times) to offering film production services?
Jason: Our magazine is unique in that most of our interviews take place in workshops, recording studios or artist’s homes, where we spend hours talking to our subjects and photographing their gear and spaces. (As you probably can imagine, the majority of magazines today do phone or email interviews for efficiency’s sake. We’re not efficient at all by corporate media standards!)
Since the magazine’s inception (2005), I have personally witnessed numerous magical moments with both musicians and artisans that I wish we could have filmed. With the advent of DSLR filmmaking (high-quality video capability from the same cameras we were using for still photography), we started to experiment with accumulating video gear (tripods, lighting) and learning the ropes.
In 2010, I entered myself in the Platypus Workshop, a week-long bootcamp for photo journalists interested in video run by veteran shooter Dirck Halstead. That gave me a nice foundation for video capture and some editing know-how. Soon after, I brought my two DSLRs to Los Angeles for an interview I was doing with Jackson Browne. At one point, he pulled out his guitar and I was capture a gorgeous solo take of his tune “Something Fine” that has become a perennial FJ favorite. It also obviously helped us promote the issue of the magazine that he appeared in (FJ #22).
Our staff today remains relatively small but we all take part in our video productions. From adjusting microphones/mixers to running cameras or editing, it’s a team effort. Full-time employee Scott Krashan does most of our video editing these days, but that’s of course not his only job. None of us have a traditional filmmaking background but we’re constantly learning and trying to raise our bar. And every shoot teaches us about something we did wrong. We also have about a dozen filmmakers and video editors we work with on special projects or when we can’t travel or we just need some help. We also bring in a freelance audio engineer for certain shoots.
The film production services we offer aren’t a large part of our business but every month it seems like we’re filming at least one thing for a client. Clients have ranged from a classical musician/FJ fan from the East Coast who flew out to have us create a few promo videos to guitar companies and even online streaming giant Rhapsody. Our rates are cheap by industry standards and we know music, so we’re trusted.
Q: Do you have a formula for an effective ratio of podcast to video minutes on the site?
Jason: We treat the videos and podcasts as separate channels, really. The video audience on our site and YouTube obviously has some overlap with our podcast listeners (you have to like our content, viewpoint and aesthetic to enjoy any of this… it’s pretty niche!), but there are also a lot of podcast listeners who have don’t watch our videos or even receive our magazine.
Occasionally, we’ll shoot a music performance video with an artist and then do an audio-only interview after for a podcast. My sense is that podcast listeners have more time for long-form interviews than most video watchers — it’s not uncommon to have a 90 minute-plus podcast interview on even mainstream podcasts.
We’ve been doing podcasts in some form for six or seven years now, long before they became a big deal. Our production quality keeps improving. I just like the medium. In the perfect world, we release a video a week on our site (it may be a five-minute song or something longer) and a podcast every two weeks.
Q: I imagine due to the investment in equipment and personnel that it takes to record and edit videos, that other areas of your operation support the videos on the FJ website. Is this true?
Jason: From day one, most of our marketing has been through word-of-mouth. We don’t do a ton of advertising or Facebook promoted posts, direct mail, etc. The videos we produce are one of the main ways we can show customers what we’re working on and, hopefully, promote the magazine. As the medium gets established, we’re starting to get sponsorship opportunities, which is great. But mostly we film because we love sharing these stories and this music and because it’s a great extension of our brand.
Q: How do you keep video making as affordable as possible?
Jason: We tend to focus on cameras that offer a good bang-for-their-buck. Lighting, microphones and audio gear, too. Truth-be-told, great camera gear can be had for cheap; the real cost is in the time and the effort and learning how to use it. A day of video shooting or editing means a day we’re not working on other projects, like the print edition. So we try to work quickly and have our studio in our office fairly dialed in. Our lighting rig is minimal, as is our audio setup, though it seems to slowly be growing.
Q: Are you using one that’s especially good for close up work?
Jason: There’s no magic bullet lens or camera for close-up work when it comes to the videos we do We’ve had great luck with ancient ’70s macro lenses that are completely manual focus that we put on our digital cameras with an adaptor ring and with built-in lenses on the far more modern Lumix FZ1000. It really comes down to lighting and cropping, the hands of the operator and how quickly the subject is moving.
Q: If you had your perfect combination of video recorders for musician interviews and the production work you do, what brands and/or models would they be?
Jason: There are so many. It really depends on the operators’ preference and the shooting environment, how portable it needs to be, etc. Blackmagic, Canon, Sony and Panasonic are all making great cameras. The Sony Alpha A7RII is probably one of the most critically acclaimed cameras around as of this writing, but the costs for bodies and lenses add up far beyond our current rigs. I’d welcome them, of course, but I’d rather put some spare change toward getting some new microphones or audio gear.
Q: What are a few of life rewards of videos you’ve made? (What keeps you doing it…a favorite story…)
Jason: I feel blessed that there have been so many great video moments. I’ve shot intimate performances by Jackson Browne and David Crosby where I was literally the only audience member, bouncing between two cameras and an audio recorder to make sure things were recording properly but completely speechless. I feel lucky to have been able to capture those.
I’ll forever be proud of the videos we’ve shot with Bill Frisell… all solo and just gorgeous. We’ve also been able to shed a little light on lesser known performers, like the amazing tenor guitarist John Lawlor. Someone needs to shoot a full-length documentary on him.
View examples:
- “Bill Frisell: Effects pedal demonstration” (Above)
- “Twelve Days of Fretboard: Bill Frisell” (Vimeo)
We’re currently wading through dozens of hours of great performances from our big Fretboard Summit that took place in November (Author’s note: see Julian Lage & T.K. Smith — “Topsy”) The fact that our magazine brought so many talented performers out to a little resort in California is something I don’t take for granted. We’ve experimented from time-to-time with live streaming our video shoots. These tend to be high stress situations as anything and everything can go wrong while hundreds of people are watching. I also tend to host these, which adds to my personal stress level. But we did a shoot with Nels Cline (Wilco) and Julian Lage where Nels played a tune called “The Bond” (41:07) that was one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard. I don’t know if it translated to video or not but it was really an emotional piece of music for me, and I was sitting two feet away from him. Incredible.
Q: Anything you want to tell me that I didn’t ask?
Jason: At the end of the day, it’s all about storytelling, whether it’s a magazine article, a video of a performance or a podcast. And some stories lend themselves better to one format over another. We just want to share them the best way we can.
When we talk about video, especially videos involving musicians or interviews, the importance of audio capture can’t be overstated. We’ve learned this the hard way. You can shoot gorgeous video on a $500 camera but to get production quality audio, you can’t skimp on the audio gear. A nice lav mic alone may cost $500 and that’s just for the mic itself. Audio recorders can range from a $200 Zoom to something that costs thousands and, over time, you do learn that you get what you pay for. The nice thing about audio gear is that it tends to keep its resale value over time, unlike cameras which are constantly being updated and dropping in price.
Ellen: Thank you very much for your time. My deep respect for you and staff for so stunningly telling the stories of these important people and making such an impact on the readers and all the people working in the music industry FJ covers. The world stops at our house when a new issue of FJ arrives. I can’t imagine any magazine being more satisfying or inspiring. My husband and I are still thinking and talking about the articles and exploring music from the previous issue when the next one arrives.
Note: Aspiring interviewers will be interested to see Jason’s article:“How to interview your favorite musician.”
