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I recently made a video to accompany a song made by my friends who are in a band called 'Theatre Royal'. We didn't plan the day too well. Ollie, the lead singer of the group, had a few ideas of how he wanted the film to look, but the main feeling was only that it should look creepy and perhaps confused. I turned up at the house of Ollie and John (the groups drummer) and we listened to the song a few times and then got to work in the spare room. They were just in the process of moving out so the place was half empty and a bit of a mess. The mantlepiece was full of candles so we lit them all and went to work. I didn't want to shoot anything that looked too fake so just decided to line up a series of interesting looking fixed-camera scenes, focusing most of the time on Ollie's face. I thought it best to communicate the song via his face. I didn't want to be too fast moving with the scenes, or try to take the viewers eye off the ball in any other contrived way; far too many music vids work the angles and con the viewer in my opinion. It is a song, sung by this band, and this is the band, so look at the lead singer, and listen to the song. The words are ok, put them at the forefront, have him singing them up close. That's it. As I explained, the room was a bit of a mess, and in the corner was a tall mirror which the lads said they didn't want. We came up with a plan to smash it. Ollie would be looking into it all through the song, asking the question that forms part of the chorus - 'What's my name, am I usually like this?' - of himself. We'd smash it somehow as we went on and see how the filming panned out after that. We put a small camera behind the mirror to capture the smashing from that side and thankfully it stayed intact and nobody got any glass in their eyes. I didn't use a tripod much so sometimes it's a bit shaky. It's best to keep the camera steady but tripods can be so intrusive at times, they slow you down too and rule the way you shoot a scene, and I don't like that and would rather sacrifice a bit of steadiness for a bit of spontaneity. The other 2 lads turned up an hour or so later. We drifted from scene to scene, no set plan. I asked John to collect a spider from the garden and let it walk over Ollie's face. I'm not sure what that was about, probably a statement about man's insignificance, or perhaps trying to see life from another species point of view, or something. Ollie asked if we could have a blue cast on the lighting. We couldn't, but I could put that in at the editing stage. I remembered a series of 10 Polish films called Dekalog in which the director made great use of light to set the mood. He used blue a lot, to convey a coldness of feeling. At the end of 3 hours we had 50 minutes worth of footage. The lads were eager to get off for a night out in Rochester so we called it a day. Here's what the film came out like. First a few stills, then the 2 versions of the film, 1 with a blue cast, 1 with a kodachrome (slightly saturated) cast. I'm not sure what the lads think of the film, but I think it's ok. As usual with my stuff the fun was in the making, for me, rather than the end result.

Here's the first version of the film, with a blue 'Dekalog' inspired cast. This is the version I like the most.

And here's the second version of the film, with a kodachrome style finish.

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