Scribbles Video

The Making of "My Mexicoma"

I fell in love with Tim McGraw’s song “Mexicoma” early this Summer after buying his latest album ‘Two Lanes of Freedom’. In addition to it being sung by my all time favourite Country superstar, its upbeat tempo and identifiable message made it an immediate smash hit in my books. It was released at a time when its lyrics could easily be applied to my life and I quickly came up with the notion I wanted to pay homage to the song with a video.

As with most Scribbles Videos, what takes mere minutes to enjoy, actually took a crap load of time to produce and “My Mexicoma” would prove to be one of my most challenging and frustrating to date.

I originally hooked up a camcorder and recorded the entire song numerous times with me dancing around my apartment in various cowboy hats and outfits. That effort would prove to be a huge waste of time when I discovered the camcorder was not compatible with my laptop and I could not transfer the recorded footage to make my video. I was pissed off and retired the video idea.

Later, when a second heartbreaking “life event” once again found me singing along to Mexicoma’s meaningful words, I decided I would give the video another try. The footage of me lip synching was shot on location in Welland and St Catharines. It was quite a challenge as there was no back track for me to sing along to because you can’t play music and record video at the same time on an iphone. I had to estimate the timing between lyrics while holding my iphone in one hand and checking that no one was watching me laying on the lawn, sitting on my car or walking through the park, singing to myself.

It would be several months later before I got around to actually putting the video together. To get my lips to move in time with Tim McGraw’s singing, I had to speed up and slow down various portions of the clips, over and over (which my Movie Maker program hated, crashing several times.)

The footage of me dancing and jumping around in my old apartment were actually rehearsal videos for performances I did at The New Vouz about 15 years ago. The songs were ‘Sundown’ by Gordon Lightfoot and ‘Pink’ by Aerosmith, meaning matching my lips to the lyrics of an entirely different song would add another challenge.

But as with all obsessive compulsive people, once you get an idea in your head, you go to any measure to bring it to life. “My Mexicoma” is the result of that disorder and I hope you enjoy it.