Quiet Hooves plays in a swimming pool – drums floating on a raft.

Allison Weiss finishes a song in Ben and Jerry’s and is promptly handed an ice cream cone.

Hope for Agoldensummer plays on the roof of The Grit, using guitar straps the restaurant’s owner made on the spot out of mop strings.

Nate Nelson and Cortright sing, “Is this powerful enough for you?” A siren in the distance seems to answer yes.

These are Soundies, the one-take, low-fi music videos that University alumnus Ethan Payne and senior Jason Miller make.

According to their Web site, the name comes from one of the first forms of music videos. Soundies were short musical films shown in bars and clubs on “video jukebox projectors” in the 1940s.

Payne and Miller were inspired by Vincent Moon, who films similar “Take-Away Shows” in Paris.

“It’s not the first time someone took a band out and did something acoustic, but he [Moon] really popularized it,” Miller said.

Before they began making Soundies, Miller and Payne contacted Moon, who encouraged their idea.

The two have been making Soundies for a little more than a year now.

“It’s a more intimate, stripped down take on a music video,” Payne said. “We try to bridge the gap between really glossy music videos and cell phone cameras at shows.”

They begin the process of making a Soundie by contacting bands they are interested in.

“At first, it was just people we know and their friends,” Payne said.

“It started out almost totally local.”

More recently, they began making Soundies for bands from other cities who come to play shows in Athens.

They now contact bands through MySpace and through managers, publicists and record labels.

As they have become better known, bands have begun approaching the pair about making Soundies.

“It depersonalizes it to where you don’t know what the band thinks,” Payne said of working with managers and publicists.

“We’re always used to the band being really into it.”

As they progress, they hope to find sponsors so they can get better equipment, Miller said.

But, “then you have to worry about super cool bands thinking we’re sellouts because we don’t do everything for free,” he said.

Some of their newest Soundies include Dr. Dog, Punch Brothers, Chairlift and Dead Confederate.

Once they find a band to work with, Miller and Payne begin looking for a location.

“Typically we don’t know where we’re going to do it until that day,” Miller said.

Previous Soundies have been shot in a co-op grocery store, on the end of an old boxcar, in a gas station parking lot, under the branches of a magnolia tree and in front of the abandoned Nuwaubian temple on Broad Street.

“One of the hardest parts of Soundies right now is trying to come up with new, creative spots,” Payne said.

After they decide on a location, it usually takes about half an hour to set up, and then they begin filming.

“We usually mess up once, and they usually mess up once, and then we get it,” Miller said.

After filming, the videos’, post-production usually can be completed in a few hours.

Once the film is polished and ready to go, it is uploaded to their Web site: www.athenssoundies.com.

“I really wanted to make music videos,” Miller said.

But, “it takes between a couple of weeks and a couple of months, it takes a lot of money [to make a music video], and we can shoot these in two hours.”

Payne and Miller said they make all of their Soundies for free.

The experience is more about having fun than making money.

“We do video production and film as a career, but this is just a side project to keep us sane,” Miller said.

Their jobs help “keep us afloat while we do things we love – like Soundies,” Payne said.

In turn, their Soundies have led to other work – such as a project they have been doing with Of Montreal for the past six months.

“It’s not really a unique idea, but I think it’s going to grow into something,” Miller said of their Soundies. “I think a new idea will be born.”