Video editor Glen Lazarro recently posted a story to the 99 Tigers blog where he takes a look back on the making of Rush's Time Stand Still video. From the post:

Producer Stuart Samuels called Sales Executive Steve Ostrow to book me for 7 days straight. I would have to be available 24 hours a day. Zbigniew Rybcznski wanted the freedom of working around-the-clock on two Music Videos. One for Rush and one for Mr. Mister. He wanted to, as he said, “Edit Live.” ... His early work was shot and edited on film but lately he had become enamored with Video effects and had shot his last few projects on Videotape. I personally thought he seemed more concerned with technology rather that esthetics.

An edit suite was set up in the control room of National’s largest stage where I would live for the next seven days. You can see the edit suite at 2:17 in the Rush Video. Zibig moved his wife and children into one of the green rooms. Rush and Aimee Mann moved into adjoining rooms. I got a room in a Holiday Inn across the street from National I never saw.

Zibig had shot footage of country landscapes for Rush and the idea was to shoot short pieces of Rush performing the song against green screen and composite them together. When we started working he decided that he loved the stage and wanted to composite Rush over that instead. I suggested that we shoot them live in the stage but Zibig wanted everyone to “float” around the stage. He also insisted that everything had to happen “live.” Each new layer would be placed on top of the preceding layer without making protection copies or “laying off” a copy, as we used to say. The green screen footage was shot with the same giant studio camera Aimee Mann is using in the Video. Zibig would give some vague direction to Rush, I would set up the effects, play the audio track and press record and multiple One-Inch tape machines would roll up on the third floor. For 3 days in a row. It didn’t matter what time it was. If Zibig got an idea at 3 in the morning he would wake everyone up (I was sleeping in the control room) and we would all go to work. We started on Saturday morning and on Tuesday night we finished. ...

The post also includes this spoof version of the video which Lazarro introduces with the line This is a Brilliant Spoof of the Rush video. It really skewers the editor. Me. Thanks to RushFanForever for the heads up.

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