{"id":27099,"date":"2012-09-03T13:07:18","date_gmt":"2012-09-03T13:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philipbloom.net\/?p=27099"},"modified":"2012-09-04T10:36:51","modified_gmt":"2012-09-04T10:36:51","slug":"music-videos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philipbloom.net\/blog\/music-videos\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post: The changing face of music videos"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I met Olly Knights from Turin Brakes through twitter almost 3 years ago and we nattered for ages. Eventually a\u00a0collaboration\u00a0ensued with “Ascension Day”, my first “proper” music video. I haven’t done many. Most of my work is in documentary, but I loved doing this. I eventually did two more, one for Turin Brakes and one more for Olly for his solo single, which forms part of the\u00a0documentary\u00a0I have made of him recording his solo album. This comes out soon as does the album. In the meantime Olly has written a cracking guest post on how music videos have changed over time and how you must adjust accordingly…these are not my views but Olly’s!<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s Four AM, I\u2019m standing on the shingle of a freezing cold Dungeness Beach in Kent England, it\u2019s pouring with rain and my musical partner and I are busy apologizing to various members of the large film crew assembled in a large white marquee, eating their hot breakfasts from the catering team and looking generally miserable. We are very sorry that they\u2019ve all had to leave their warm beds for our silly video\u2026<\/p>\n

Sophie Muller who is directing beckons me over and quietly asks me what the hell I\u2019m apologizing for? \u201cThese people live for this shit, not to mention you\u2019re paying handsomely, now start acting like a rock star\u201d she reminds me!<\/p>\n

It was our first ever Turin Brakes shoot for a song called \u201cthe Door\u201d taken from our debut album \u201cThe Optimist LP\u201d in early 2001. The budget was a modest \u00a360,000 – Virgin records wanted to start off gently with this first \u201ctaste making\u201d single, so went with what was considered at the time a medium to low budget.<\/p>\n

We were shooting on Super16mm film with two Arri SR2 cameras set up with Cooke Zooms so shots could be made quickly in a documentary style. With a crew of approximately 30 people, techs, make up, catering, label people, actors, dancers in animal costumes, kids, girlfriends, boyfriends you name it.<\/p>\n

The shoot went well and later we would re-convene in Sophie\u2019s flat where she\u2019d hired an Avid suite to cut the video herself. We sat in on the edit for a few hours, had some laughs at our own expense and a few weeks later saw the graded and finished version being played on a steady loop on the then Indie friendly MTV2.<\/p>\n