May 2006: My first paid gig

My first paid gig as an artist was a music video for a Romanian rap group from Jane and Finch called Gypsy Cartel. My buddy and I ran a production company called CT-Productionz and made a name for ourselves making music videos for Toronto based rappers we would find on SoundClick (the 2006 version of SoundCloud). We eventually caught the attention of rapper Chuckie Akenz and Paul Nguyen. Before Paul became a documentary filmmaker for the CBC, he used to run a site called Jane-Finch. The site showcased work done by artists living in Jane and Finch. We were the first non-J&F people to work on something for the site.
The shoot lasted a whole day. A lot of it was trying to get people in the video. Originally it was going to be just the 2 rappers but we made them call all their friends to be in it. We told them they would look like losers if they did not have anyone in the video especially when the song is called "Come with us". We eventually got a good amount of people (and a dog) to be in it. After the shoot, the Gyspy Cartel guys ordered a bunch of pizzas and we had a couple of beers. It was a fun day.
Editing was a nightmare though. The mouth movements did not sync up with the original audio track. We had to slow down all the scenes they were rapping in by a few milliseconds.
The video is not around anymore but I found a page that has some screenshots of the video. We really killed it on those camera angles 🙄