B.Y.O.B – Prescription – Dir Steve Glashier
Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip – Letter From God To Man
It was always going to have to be something pretty big to get me working on another promo. We met Dan and Pip filming The Porter Report. We had less than two weeks to complete the project; pre-production, shooting, post… everything. Fortunately Porter decided he’d have a stab at producing, so I got to have a laugh at him stressing about all the things that put me off making promos in the first place!
South Central – ‘Castle of Heroes’ – Director Steve Glashier
We’d become ground down by the pitching for videos, so this was something of a reaction against that process. When we started making videos, the treatments would take up four colour printed pages with diagrams and storyboards. After eighteen months, we were just typing a paragraph. By the time we pitched for this it was literally just an email saying ‘yeah we’ll do it, but only if we’re allowed complete creative control.’ They said “do what you like” so that’s exactly what we did. We decided to get everything we like; naked chicks, Elvis impersonators, drugs, guns, magicians, and film it all, mostly in the name of having a good day out more than anything else. South Central didn’t want anything to do with it, so we shot it all from the point of view from the Directors. A lot of people think the two guys on the sofa are the band and that we really did have that kind of a budget, but a lot of people are fucking idiots. It was a piece of piss to film, although getting the gunshot right was very time consuming; I think it works really well, and aside form the effects, a lot of that’s down to Jolie’s fall. We watched the life literally drop out of her as she hit the deck.
DJ Scotch Egg – ‘Scotch Bach II’ – Director Steve Glashier
We knew what we were going to film for this: we were going to shoot a gameboy orchestra with Scotch Egg conducting, we had the ideal location, a load of extras to fill it with and the 8 Bit Tux tees that we’d designed and printed. What we didn’t know is how they’d all react when we told them to start knocking the shit out of each other, which came right at the end of the day. We had 20 minutes left to get everything done- we were only half way through the song- and people were starting to twig, so we sat them down and told them what was going to happen: it was going to finish with a fight. We told them ‘If you don’t want to get involved run to the side of the room as fast as you can’ and when we started filming only two or three people did. Another one just sat there, motionless, whilst everybody else just went berserk. Chairs started flying everywhere and the noise was incredible, it was really shocking. I genuinely thought people wouldn’t go for it, but they absolutely committed to it- as the bruises at the end of the day stood testament.Those interested in the world of Wrong Music will note that the front row consists of DJ Shitmatt, Tim Exile, Chevers, Lu Lu Deluxe from Kunt, Kai from Phil Collins 3, Jimmy Edgar and Ned from Overkill. If these names mean nothing to you, it’s probably best you keep it that way.
Prinzhorn Dance School – ‘Crackerjack Docker’ – Director Steve Glashier
Prinzhorn knew what they wanted to do, and they approached this in the same way that they write their music: they presented me with a series of very complex charts that don’t really make any sense to anyone else apart from them, so you had to grasp that concept as well as making a fucking music video. They are really involved, so it was like collaborating with two other directors really. We shot it in the studio where they recorded the album, which is next to Tobin’s Dad’s workshop- he’s an artist who works with metal- so there were loads of tools everywhere. We went through them, picking out tools we liked and thought would look good and work well. We pieced it all together, filmed everything fairly statically and shot on to 16mm- the only thing we’ve ever done on film. The shot of the guy tying the Monkey Fist knot sustains the middle eight, which was quite brave. We held off on cutting it up, and I think the payoff is better in the end because of it. In a way, this video goes on to inspire the Super U video because I realised watching people make things is so much more interesting than watching a band miming to their fucking single.
Keno 1 – ‘Manifest’ – Director Steve Glashier
This was made with the sole intention of entering into OneDotZero. I’d been the year before with Snub and came back wanting to enter something, made this video… and it got entered straight away and it’s still included when they tour the festival. It took three months to render, although the 3D bit wasn’t that complicated: we were using shit computers that took half an hour to render a frame! If people went on holiday we’d use their computer for a week, it was that shoestring. The only problem with it taking that long was the amount of ideas I’d have in the meantime. By the time it was finished I wanted to do it completely differently- with scaffold up the side of the structure that collapsed at the end, revealing the deck- Florion just told me to Fuck Off!
Still Touring As Part Of British Councils Creative Cities
Fatboy Slim – ‘Champion Sound’ – Director Steve Glashier
We got asked to do this off the back of ‘That Old Pair of Jeans’. Assuming there’d be a budget we wrote a treatment that involved robots playing computer games: it involved flying to Japan, helicopters, that kind of stuff. We got it costed up and I think it came out at £70 grand, so obviously we never got a reply on that one. In reaction we thought, what’s the cheapest way to shoot a video? And we came up with the mobile phones, ‘cuz we’d seen the Nokia N93 and we liked the look of it but you couldn’t get them in the UK. We rang up Nokia, they sent some over, and we started working stuff out. The dominos needed a lot planning, because it had to run in time with the track, but once that was sorted it was just a case of choreographing the girls with the phones. I’m pretty sure this was the first music video to be shot on moblies ,The set up was painstaking: to give you an example, we had to file down the bottom of each of the biscuits so they stood up properly! Once it was all on place, which took the best part of the day, we had to leave it over knight: I remember closing the door as gently as I possibly could. It took a few attempts, but we got it done in one take the following day and we had a Fatboy Slim video under our belt. At the time, doing a video for Norman was a bit like the Holy Grail. Everything they say about doing a Fatboy Slim video is true: you do get offered everything, and we DID get offered everything, but everything was really, really shit! Be careful for what you wish for ‘cuz you might get it, that was the really big lesson we all learned form this.
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