When the shelter in place order in 2020 occurred, it became clear that communicating on Zoom or other video conferencing apps would present a new video making opportunity. With the inability to schedule normal shoots, tools like Zoom offer the ability to interview people anywhere virtually and record the interview.

When a musician friend, John, sent us a video he’d uploaded to a Chicago area site called The WC Sessions where people record music from their bathrooms, a video story was sparked. We were able to interview John and five other site performers who were regularly submitting performance videos.

The idea of playing music in a bathroom goes way back before recording when musicians enjoyed the reverberation sound quality created by the tile room. Most notably John Lennon and Paul McCartney would compose early songs while rehearsing in Paul’s childhood home bathroom. Countless musicians have recorded sound styles while setting up mics and instruments in the WC.

We learned quickly that Zoom interview quality varied from subject to subject. Picture quality was inconsistent, but in every case the audio was good enough to be equalized along with adding video color correction while editing in AVID Media Composer. Often there was frame lag throwing off the lip-sync but it was easy to re-sync the chats. Since all of the performance videos appeared on Facebook we were able to screen capture the Facebook entry with performer information to use as a framing for the live video performance captured by pulling that off of Facebook.

What ensued is a 4-minute video that we feel captures the fun and lightness that playing on the WC Sessions site offers for participants and viewers. The performers consistently were challenged to set up their phone angles for a correct recording not to mention the pressure of getting a performance right. The spontaneity of doing it is the fun part, as we learned personally when adding our own song.