08/14/2026
Do What You Wanna Do
“…You wanna get what you ask for (ah, ah, yeah)
You gotta knock down the front door (ah, ah, yeah)…”
The Premise
Do What You Wanna Do is a straight-up declaration: be yourself, break the rules, don’t wait for permission.
The Jeff Ware Band wanted a video that matched that energy—raw, real, and full of personality.
The plan was simple. Almost too simple.
Film the band where the music was made—Postal Recording Studios—and mix that with footage of them out in Indianapolis, including Fountain Square.
No big concept. No heavy treatment.
Just the band being the band.
That was the idea.
It didn’t hold.
The Challenge
Clark Crosser handled everything—producing, directing, shooting, editing, and color grading—with help from Photographer/Videographer Torrie Hudson.
They captured strong moments at Postal Recording Studios, plus additional footage at The Dug Out and around Fountain Square.
Individually, the pieces worked.
But together, they didn’t add up to a full video.
There just wasn’t enough material with enough punch to carry the song.
And the song needed punch.
Energy. Movement. Attitude.
So the decision was made: go back in and shoot more—specifically for performance.
The Green Screen
The entire band came into LDR Studios for a dedicated green-screen session.
This time, nothing was observational.
It was all performance.
And they delivered.
Loose, loud, and fully in the pocket, the band gave Clark the kind of footage the project had been missing.
The green screen solved one problem—and created another.
It gave them total freedom.
But no world to put the band in.
No background.
No visual identity.
Just performances floating in green.
Clark began editing everything together—studio footage, location shots, and the new performances.
The structure started to work.
The energy started to land.
But one question took over the room:
What do we put behind them?
Finding the Look
Clark sat down with Jeff and members of the band and started experimenting.
They went through different treatments and different possibilities, looking for something that could tie all of these pieces together and give the video an identity of its own.
Then they hit the Comic Book effect.
There it was.
The live-action footage suddenly took on a completely different personality—hard blacks, sharp whites, bold outlines, exaggerated colors, and a hand-drawn quality that transformed the band into something halfway between real musicians and characters ripped from the pages of a graphic novel.
The reaction was immediate.
Everybody liked it.
That was the look.
But choosing the comic-book treatment answered only half the question.
They knew what the band should look like.
Now they had to decide what the world around them should look like.
Once everyone was happy with the comic-book effect, the next idea fell into place:
Graffiti.
Instead of replacing the green screen with realistic locations or conventional backgrounds, Clark began using graffiti-style imagery behind the band.
Now the pieces started talking to each other.
The comic-book treatment gave the musicians their character.
The graffiti imagery gave them their world.
And suddenly the video had the attitude it had been missing from the beginning.
Building the World
From there, the edit became less about fixing a problem and more about seeing how far the idea could be pushed.
Clark began compositing the green-screen performances over crowdsourced graffiti-style imagery, experimenting with different backgrounds, textures, framing, transitions, and color treatments.
Black-and-white comic-book imagery could suddenly explode into full color.
Graffiti could fill the frame behind the musicians.
Real footage from Postal Recording Studios could collide with completely artificial environments.
And because the band had given such strong performances during the green-screen shoot, they weren’t overwhelmed by the visual treatment.
They drove it.
The imagery moved around the performances rather than replacing them.
The finished world became a mash-up of comic books, street art, Rock & Soul, retro music-video attitude, and the personalities of the musicians themselves.
It wasn’t something anyone had storyboarded at the beginning.
It was discovered.
And that’s an important distinction.
The team didn’t begin with a finished visual concept and simply execute it.
They kept responding to what the project needed.
Not enough exciting footage?
Shoot more.
Need freedom in post?
Shoot green screen.
Don’t know what the visual treatment should be?
Experiment.
Find the comic-book look?
Push it.
Need a world behind it?
Graffiti.
One decision led naturally to the next.
The Result
The finished Do What You Wanna Do bears very little resemblance to the video originally planned.
Only about ten percent of the original footage ultimately survived—primarily some of the vocal-booth imagery from Postal Recording Studios and footage of the horn players.
But that’s part of what makes the project work.
LDR Studios wasn’t locked into protecting the original idea simply because time had already been spent shooting it.
The goal was to make the best video for the song.
And sometimes getting there means admitting the first idea isn’t enough.
What started as a straightforward studio-and-location music video evolved into a funky collision of live action, comic-book treatment, graffiti-style imagery, black-and-white, vivid color, and energetic performance.
The final video looks intentional from beginning to end.
But the truth behind it is more interesting.
It evolved.
One creative decision unlocked another until the project finally found its personality.
And in a strange way, the process ended up reflecting the message of the song itself.
Don’t worry about doing things the conventional way.
Don’t be afraid to change direction.
Don’t wait for somebody to hand you the answer.
Experiment.
Get weird.
Find what works.
And when you find it—
Do What You Wanna Do.
Black & white. Color. Graffiti. Cool cats. Retro sounds. Rock & Soul.
You’ll Funkin’ love it!
The Jeff Ware Band Do what you wanna do Jeff Ware - lead vocals/...
