Love In Vain [Short No Credits]
A music video that tells the story of Robert Johnson’s lament, LOVE IN VAIN. The film takes the viewer on a journey on old Route 66 from New Mexico, Arizona, Amboy California and Palm Springs as our hero chases his lost love (the woman in red) only to be rebuked. But, does he still have a chance? The viewer must decide..
Rudy Strukoff has been a film teacher and digital arts educator in California public and private schools since 2016. He is currently teaching guitar and digital arts at Old Town Artisan Studios (OTAS) in La Quinta California.
In the 2017-18 school year, Rudy led thirty-two 7th and 8th grade boys on a year-long film project entitled DARTH VADER GOES BACK TO SCHOOL. In this film, the Star Wars universe collides with our own world due the explosion of the Death Star at the end of A NEW HOPE (Episode IV) and the simultaneous use of a Flux Capacitor by a teenager here on Earth.
The premise for the film is that the tear in the space-time continuum that resulted from these two events created a worm-hole that grabbed Darth Vader’s out of control ship which sends him “back to the future.”
After Darth crash lands on the campus of Bernice Ayer Middle School (BAMS) in San Clemente, California, he experiences kindness from the students he meets alone his journey, softening his heart and creating permanent change in his life going forward.
The 85-minute feature length film promotes the idea that we should show kindness to those who are different looking than us, or dress differently than us, or come from somewhere else.
The film promotes anti-bullying by showing the positive effects of kindness and is an example for all ages. The film was premiered at BAMS at the end of the school year and shown to faculty, students and parents. The film can be viewed at www.rudystrukoff.com
Rudy has also taught students how to create TV commercials for products that don’t exist, and led them in the film production and editing of plays, concerts and football games that were aired school wide.
Rudy is currently working with teens and adults at OTAS teaching photography, film production and editing using his old cameras and Final Cut Pro on the iMac’s in his classroom.
Before moving to California, Rudy was a touring musician based first out of Albuquerque, NM, then Baltimore, MD and finally Las Vegas, Nevada, over the period 1994-2013.
My film, LOVE IN VAIN, was a labor of love that began when my musical journey started while learning to play the guitar in 1992. The song was the first I learned on the instrument and I have been performing it live since 1994.
In 2001, I recorded a version of Love in Vain that was never officially released; it was part of a CD single: Only 5 disks printed. I recorded the song for my wife on the occasion of our 10th wedding anniversary. My wife Kathleen, my muse and the reason I started playing guitar, bought me guitar lessons as a birthday present (because she was sick and tired of watching me play air guitar).
As I was making this film, I found this old track and decided use it for this film so I re-mixed and mastered the track for this project in December of 2022.
I shot this film over two road trips from Palm Springs, CA to New Mexico from May through July, 2022. The film was shot with a DJI Pocket Osmo and a Sony Alpha III, set up in the back of my SUV on a small tripod. Later in August of 2022, my Little Brother (of Big Brothers/Big Sisters) was visiting us in Palm Springs. With his help, we shot the slide guitar sequences at an abandoned Amtrak station on North Indian Canyon, in Palm Springs, using a DJI Mavic Pro drone as well as the Pocket Osmo and the Sony Alpha.
After cutting the new clips into the travel footage I realized that I needed a great opening title sequence so I went back to Amboy, California in September of ’22, to old Route 66 with my drone in hand to get aerial footage, both pre-dawn, and at the moment of sunrise.
Finally, I needed to get an actress to pose as the object of desire for the story’s hero. With my wife’s help in casting and wardrobe, I was able to hire Desi Grisham, a film newcomer, to play the part of “The Woman In Red.” We filmed Desi and myself at the same abandoned Amtrak Station in Palm Springs with the help of Kathleen Strukoff on the Osmo steady cam.
The story has 3 main characters. In the present, our “Hero” and the acoustic guitarist is the storyteller. Shot with vivid blue desert skies in the background, this character sings to us his sorrowful yet hopeful lament.
The sequences of the woman in red are now a memory for our hero and are shot with very low saturation to the point of being almost black and white, with only the red dress worn by Desi as the dominant color. The post editing added the focal point aperture setting with extreme depth of focus.
The slide guitar sequences represent a third character. Shot at sunrise at the Palm Springs Amtrak Station, this footage is dominated by yellow and gold colors and slightly out of focus. This character represents the hopeful alter-ego of our hero that believes that his charisma and guitar playing will ultimately win her back.
Two other features that dominate the film are the birds (who hated my drone for invading their airspace) and the time-lapse cloud footage. These elements added surrealism to my transitions and helped to create a dreamlike reality that allowed me to move between the three characters.
I was heavily influenced in the making of this film by the Chris Isaak music videos from the 80’s and 90’s, in particular the 1991 WICKED GAME video directed by Herb Ritts. For the suitcase shots with Desi, I was influenced by the lonely appeal and melancholia evoked by the opening Tippi Hedren sequence of Hitchcock’s 1964 release, MARNIE, and the train station goodbye between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in 1959’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Viewers of LOVE IN VAIN may also notice the similarities to Hitchcocks, VERTIGO. Though not in an emerald colored dress, the dreamlike memories of the woman in red, putting on lipstick, harken to James Stewart’s visions of Kim Novak.
And let’s not forget the movie, THE BIRDS…the angry pigeons attacking my drone created wonderful transitions away from my lady in red and represent the anger that our heroine feels which has ultimately made her want to leave her home.
I learned two things making this film: 1. Making a movie is really hard when shooting exterior shots because of the distance between shoots when you have a very limited budget and only an hour or so to get the shots before you have to get on the road to the next location and, 2. It is difficult to control the light based on the time of day and angle of the sun, and still get what you want from the characters with compelling backgrounds within the frame. (Especially when your actress is late to the set on a sunrise shoot). Shooting a film on a school campus is very easy by comparison.
All in all, I’m extremely happy with this film, it may look a little too homemade for some, but it was truly a labor of love. A friend of mine who saw this film had this to say in response:
“What I love about Robert Johnson’s music and your video is the overpowering blues message. Modern blues gives one the impression that you must play ’em and then leave ’em. But Johnson’s background is nothing like that. Instead, this bottomlessly bleak and yet somehow hopeful lament suggests that maybe, against all odds, we all won’t just die out here in the desert. The visuals in this film bear this idea out in a brilliant and searing fashion!”
This version of the film is the short festival entry version of the film with no closing credits.