The job in question was a project sponsored by Grolsch called the ‘Island Sessions‘ where a group of up and coming Dutch musicians were stranded on an island with 6 acoustics, one Wurlitzer and 60 crates of the Grolsch…and what a great predicament to be in!

I managed to get some work done inbetween the fantastic food, sailing and swimming in the Vinkeveense Plassen.

See here for proof:

Not only did I get to spend a week on ‘Grolsch Island‘ but before I set sail from the Lowlands I took a roadtrip with my new pals to film two of their festival performances to edit together for a live video for their latest single ‘Let Go‘ (which was just about to get a release in the States).
See here:

(The video ended up being a mix of the bands own handy cam footage and my live footage from the shows I attended).

Once back in the UK I kept in contact with the band and it wasn’t long before we started to discuss our next collaboration which was to be the video for the bands next single ‘We Are The Young‘.

After a few weeks of Skype calls and emails we collectively decided on a concept which the band wanted to shoot in London. -In short the idea was based around a female protagonist who was in over her head with the wrong crowd. The song starts with a pre intro which gave us the idea to start the video with the final scene and then work with a reverse chronology from then on in.

We only had one full day to shoot the action for the video, partly due to budget and partly to do with the band’s busy touring schedule.

On the day of the shoot we travelled over to Edgware in North London to a location house (A friend of mine works for the local council and managed to find us a property that was in the process of being refurbished).

On arrival at the location we stumbled across our first problem, the house was actually being refurbished on the day and the room we had been allocated to shoot in had already been completed and was now looking a lot better than the intial pictures I’d seen, keeping in mind we were going for Crack Den chic.

So first off we had to dress the set and get it looking a lot more lived in. We threw in a dirty mattress, a wooden crate for use as a table, an old television and plenty of empty cans, smoked cigarettes and some fake narcotics to set the scene. We also blacked out the windows with bin bags and gaffer tape so we could light the scene more dramatically.

Unfortunately the old television wouldn’t turn on so we had to recreate the light we’d have got from the screen with a small light positioned right next to it.
In order to make it look more authentic, whoever was not in shot had the duty of rocking the light and swapping an orange and a blue gel over it to get the different colour washes over the actors faces…just like the tv would have done!

The band had arrived the night before which gave us enough time to get down the pub and storyboard the whole video into a shotlist over a few pints. This proved to be a real life saver on the day, we literally worked through each shot crossing them off as went – who’d have thought it (I say this because something as simple as having the shotlist drawn up on set on a small production like this this could be overlooked, and could lead to you over shooting or simply stressing out and missing vital parts to your narrative!)

We rattled through the action at our first location as we only had the place booked until 4pm and our lead male had to leave an hour before that.
We shot mostly in the room we’d set up in and some shots in the bathroom of the house. Again we blacked out the window and screwed a massive mirror onto the wall which I bought the day before from a charity shop, a bargain at £7 – it was a real shame we had to smash it up!

For our opening and ending shots we wanted to reveal our lead girl laying on a bathroom floor next to the bath, however, the rather efficent builders on location had removed everything from the bathroom bar the toilet pan. No taps, no bath…arggh!

The idea for that opening shot was to start close up on the girls closed eyes and pull away slowly revealing her laying in a pool of blood, getting the shot by using a mini dolly rail. Unfortunately time was against by the time we came to shoot this so we had to settle for a slow pan left to right with the tripod, not as striking as I wanted but still got the point across.

The pan would stop before revealing our lead male also lying in the pool of blood (the full pan would be used as the end shot of the video showing the two of them laying in the blood that had actually come from our male. DRAMA! ha).

With all the shots from this location in the can (and our lead male ‘otherwise engaged’ for 3 hours) we decided to break for some dinner before continuing with the night shoot to get all our external shots.

The night action was shot on an estate in North London. Our lead male returned to set and we shot the action in the car for the second verse (only being interrupted twice by local hoodies enquiring about my camera, scarily enough one of them actually questioned whether I was shooting on D5 or D7…close (perhaps he shoots Nikon?)

We then moved inside one of the blocks for our final takes of the day that make up the climax where our mob light foot it up the stairwell and storm the flat.

The actual storming of the flat had already been shot at the house so we just filmed the door being forced open then cut to our earlier footage in the edit.





So what do I think of what we produced?

As a perfectionist I could really pull it apart, I would love to have planned for the split screen elements and shot dedicated footage for them. A better lighting solution for the bathroom shots, some more convincing running shots from our mob.

BUT, overall it seems to be doing the job. I wasn’t completely sold on the concept intially, (I’m not very urban!) but the feedback has mostly been ‘I had to watch it to the end’ which hopefully means we’ve managed to translate some of the intensity of the story in order to keep people engaged.

I learnt so much from this production, the importance of a well briefed crew, production logistics, shot lists! …and fortunately I learnt these lessons without paying too dearly for them.

I did also learn about ‘Hot Pixels’ on this shoot, not as good as they sound. In short, when I got the footage loaded and converted to prores ready to edit I notice a pink block about 3 pixels long and 2 pixels wide in the same place on every shot. At first I was mortified but then thought there must be a solution, Fortunately there is a number of them.

I downloaded some free software which steals the pixel next the dead ones and replicates it, meaning everytime that pixel changes colour so will the dead pixel, you can also choose if it takes its reference from the pixel to the left/right/above or below the dead one/s.

Luckily my camera body was still under warranty and the good people at Manchester Calumet had it repaired and ready for me within a week, just in time to take to Los Angeles with me…but that’s another blog post!

A very good friend of mine over at Nudie came up with the concept of getting Lewis playing live instore at Urban Outfitters across the UK and asked whether I would like to come along for the ride, with my camera – of course!

For the uninitiated among you, Lewis is a one man band, taking influence from old Blues players right up to the virtuso guitarists of the 1960s (notably a certain Mr. Hendrix) along with a heavy dose of Wu Tang just to really break the mould.

Get over to http://www.lewisfloydhenry.com/thestorysofar.html to check him out and have a look at his mini drum kit contraption whilst you’re there.

The shows were ace, Lewis would stroll into the store with his pram which holds all of his kit and set up in a matter of minutes infront of an array of rather unexpecting shoppers.

The amount of noise he makes with such little kit is incredible, and his original material is really quite captivating and at times hilarious. It really is like nothing you’ve every seen.

At one point in the show he’ll be acting out guests at an imaginary party, then the next he’ll be on his feet screeching out Prokofiev on guitar with his teeth – unreal!

TECH BIT.

My brief for filming was quite loose, Well there was no brief, “just capture the performances so we can show everyone what we’ve been up to”.

I took a very limited kit bag with me. Fortunately my 5d had been reutrned from Canon/Calumet the day before from having a hot pixel repaired!

Along with this I took the small rode mic, the one which fits in the hot shoe on top of the body, just one lens ‘Canon 24-70′, my shoulder clamp which I bought from Amazon (a definite ‘must have’ to keep the footage nice solid) It’s not one of the really expensive rigs but I actually prefer it, it’s a lot lighter and just as secure (only negative is just the lack of rails for adding a matte box, follow focus etc). I also packed a small lighting set up as a back up as I didn’t know how dark the stores were.

Whilst we were in Edinburgh the hotel we were staying in looked out onto a little woodland. Lewis went for a morning stroll off into the glen and his manager asked whether I’d be able to get some footage of him out there as his next single is called ‘Sacred Garden’ and it would be great to have some footage in the can for the video…
We ended up shooting the whole promo in about 2 and a half hours, but that’s another story, I’ll explain all in a seperate post shortly!

ps. Here is the teaser clip with the afore mentioned Prokofiev…

I’m a filmmaker from London, England.

I use a 5d mark ii for most of my work.

I am often on a train or more recently a plane.

I have a massive interest in the 60′s.

I use to be in a band …not a boy band!

I have a website www.danielburdett.com

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