Meet Dan Hastrey, founder of Nightwave Music Media and professional video producer. Hastrey started his career composing music and managing artists. In 2004, he founded Nightwave Music Media and started directing and producing music videos. Hastrey quickly found success creating professional music videos and expanded into documentaries and corporate videos.

Dan Hastrey

Hastrey is fortunate and proud to have as one of his clients Byentl, an award winning, gold and platinum selling soul singer in the Netherlands (www.byentl.com). With manager/producer Jeffrey Borrenbergs, Hastrey shot and produced four music videos for Byentl’s album ‘Memories’. These videos were shown on TMF, the popular “MTV-like” channel in Holland and Belgium.

Hastrey uses NewBlueFX extensively in his music videos.

“We have used NewBlueFX products on almost all of our productions. For example, we use the Auto Contrast plugin from Video Essentials III. It provides us with an excellent starting point for the right contrast. Another, Noise Reducer from Video Essentials II gives us a very satisfying result, especially with darker and unclean footage or for talent close ups.”

For Byentl’s ‘Miracle’ music video, Hastrey wanted to convey a “Charles Dickens-like Christmas” music video. The client wanted a special old-school look and to achieve this, Hastrey applied Film Look, part of NewBlue Film Effects collection.

View ‘Miracle’ (HD version):

Hastrey uses Chroma Key (from Video Essentials II) extensively in Byentl’s ‘Nowhere to Run’.

“NewBlue Chroma Key is one of the most effective keys for post production of green screen shots. The talent (Byentl) was filmed in the green screen studio. The winter landscape and snow were added in post. The night blue color was created with NewBlue Film Pro.”

A second chroma key shot places Byentl in front of a wall of flames.

View “Nowhere to Run” (HD version):

Another of Hastrey’s projects, the music video for ‘Mephisto’ from the Dutch band Doncker, requires the dark look of a horror movie. The video starts with a house, shot in full daylight. Hastrey applied NewBlue Film Camera’s - Electrical Storm preset followed by Film Look’s Night preset to turn daylight into a nightmare. He explains,

“These gave us the perfect result we were looking for in a few minutes. The moon, clouds and lightning were added in post.”

Hastrey summed up his thoughts about NewBlueFX quite artfully:

“Just like a perfect wine, a good quality product does not need gold medals and a lot of bla bla. If I didn’t have the NewBlueFX products to work with, I would be like a singer without a song. It’s as simple as that!”

For more information about Dan Hastrey and Nightwave Music Media, please visit www.nwm-media.com.