Video Work: Lilygreen & Maguire – Behind The Scenes video for ‘Come On Get Higher’

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This is another Behind The Scenes video I’ve edited together for Warner Bros. Records. The footage used in this video was all shot in a single day (not by myself) on the promo shoot for ‘Come On Get Higher’, the new single from Welsh acoustic duo, Lilygreen & Maguire.

With this video, I tried to echo the split-screen effect used throughout the official video (click here to see what I mean), while at the same time keeping the “behind the scenes” atmosphere intact. One of the label’s priorities was also to keep as much of Lilygreen and Maguire’s character and personality into the video – unlike other acts who keep a fairly tight control their “behind the scenes” footage in order to preserve their “on camera” character as it were, here there were next to no restrictions on what was fair game to include from the footage provided.

The main challenge with this edit was that all the footage was shot by hand on a single camera, using the camera’s own internal microphone. This meant that not only did I have to handle varying degrees of camera wobble, but also wildly varying audio levels. As you can hear at the start of the video (during the section where John Lilygreen is being filmed singing in double-speed), even with post-production on the audio, there still remain some poor patches. Still, I tried out some new techniques sampling noise prints of traffic noises and other ambient sounds (and indeed, did so for clips from all four “locations” used in the video), and the improvements were enormous. If I’m able to get a copy of the original material, I’ll post some of it so you can compare and contrast it with the audio I processed for the final edit.

Writing: Metal Hammer magazine #228

The new issue of Metal Hammer magazine has just gone on sale – this month my contributions are the Hot New Band feature on Ikillya, and the short Welcome Back interview with Napalm Death in regards to their just-about-to-be-released new album, Utilitarian.

Video Work: Paper Crows – Disarm (Smashing Pumpkins cover)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSKVoLEqdhk]

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This video was constructed to accompany Paper Crows’ cover of ‘Disarm’ by The Smashing Pumpkins (click here to check out the original version of the song if you want a comparison with the cover version). Paper Crows are an up-and-coming duo signed to Warner Music, and they make some pretty good atmospheric electronica.

This video is interesting as it was made from the same clips used to create this video for the pair’s cover of ‘Cloudbusting’ by Kate Bush. The brief originally asked for colour effects to be applied to the flames, but time constraints on the project and the complexity of applying such effects to visuals as complicated as the flames without sacrificing the quality of the clips ruled this out in the end.

Instead, I aimed to create an edit with a greater scope in time-effects. There were eight different burning origami clips in total (of varying degrees of usefulness), all shot in HD in super slow-motion. Combining multiple clip speeds allowed for a more dynamic final result than those used in the ‘Cloudbusting’ video, and the application of precision blurring allowed for better application of false perspective when featuring multiple burning objects.

What you can’t see obviously is the use of chroma-keying I had to use to layer the various clips effectively. With all the original clips being fairly tight shots of the flames against pure black backgrounds, simply layering them up wasn’t an option – the harsh lines that indicated the edge of the individual clip limits prevented this. By chroma-keying the clips to various shades of black, I was able to artificially isolate the flames, which allowed for far more detailed layering effects. Overall, I’m pretty proud of this one.

Writing: Metal Hammer magazine #227

This month marks the publication of my first work in Metal Hammer magazine. The UK metal publishing sphere is small and professionally incestuous, meaning a few staffers there have been aware of my work for some time. One review from 2011 in particular convinced them that I was worth recruiting, and that was that.

Metal Hammer is the biggest-selling monthly magazine about heavy metal published in the UK, and by extension is one of the best-selling monthlies on the genre anywhere in the world. As such, I’m obviously delighted to be able to call myself a contributor. Issue #227 is on sale now, and contains interviews by me with Sick Of It All, The Painted Smiles, and Sam Dunn, the filmmaker behind Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey.

 

Writing: Terrorizer magazine #219

Terrorizer magazine’s February issue has just gone on sale – this month, my sole contribution is a live review of Orange Goblin’s annual London Christmas gig, which this year blew the roof off the Camden Underworld.

Video Work: Smiler – ‘DeLorean (ft. Wretch 32)’

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This video differed from previous briefs insofar as rather than editing together footage shot for a specific purpose, it was a mash-up of pre-existing footage, re-appropriated to match a song. Given that the song is called ‘DeLorean’ and the lyrics reference “Doc Brown”, it should be pretty obvious what that source material is.

For the most part, I chose to stick to taking clips from the first two Back To The Future films. They share enough visual tones that mixing and matching them was relatively easy – I made the call fairly early on in the editing process to exclude the third film from my source material as the Old West palate would visually contrast too much with the rest of the footage. For some of the close-ups of various machinery, I took clips from Spike TV’s 2010 recreation of the original teaser trailer. The only shot I used from the original version of the teaser trailer was the cut to Michael J Fox wearing sunglasses – while the quality of the 2010 re-shoot was higher and would better match the rest of the footage I was using in that regard, using footage of the actor from today wouldn’t work in context with his mid/lates 1980s self in the rest of the edit.

Although my use of it is fairly low key until right at the end, I’m particularly pleased with some of the image masking I’ve used in this video – combined with push wipes at less obvious angles, it creates a really eye-catching effect. It’s definitely a technique I plan on refining and using in future video projects. It was inspired in part by the video to ‘Reaching Out’ by Nero, although I tried to keep it more subdued in this video. While Nero’s video is intended as a pastiche of the Miami Vice credit sequence, here I was aiming for an edit that was rawer and a bit less glossy.

Video Work: Lilygreen & Maguire – acoustic cover of ‘If I Fell’ by The Beatles

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This is another video I’ve edited together for Warner Bros. Records, this time for a new singer-songwriter double-act on their books, Lilygreen & Maguire. It’s a bit of a shame that the client chose to desaturate my cut and go for a black and white look, as the two cuts I submitted highlighted some of my best choice colour correction work to date.

The original footage was shot simultaneously on two different cameras, and the resulting footage required significant post-production tinkering in order to match up the two tones. The fixed-camera wide shots had a naturally warm, orange tone to them, whereas the roving close-ups had a paler, blue-green tinge to them. I provided cuts for each of these two wildly-different tones – hopefully I’ll be able to post some clips from both of these so you can see what I’m talking about.

One of the other challenges of this brief was editing footage from live performances to match a pre-recorded studio recording of the same song. This require careful time-distortion to ensure the visuals matched up with the audio, as well as co-ordinating clips taken from several performances so as to appear as just a single take.

Video Work: Jason Derulo – Enter the UK Dance Competition (Video Tutorial)

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This is the third piece of video editing I’ve done for Warner Bros. Records – this time for the double-platinum selling Jason Derülo. The brief was to edit together an instructional video for the dance routine used in his video for ‘Don’t Want To Go Home’ (click here to check out the video), which was to form the basis for a promotional competition. This was a 2-camera shoot, with around 30 final rushes totalling around 90 minutes of footage. The final edit required this to be edited down into as short an instructional as possible, while retaining all the necessary details for the entire dance routine.

Video Work: Behind The Scenes video for Clement Marfo and The Frontline

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This is another Behind The Scenes video I edited together for Warner Bros. Records. This was a particularly challenging brief – all the footage had been shot by the band and their team during a video shoot for their single ‘Overtime (ft. Ghetts)’ (click here if you want to see the video) on a cheap camera. This meant that not only was there was a mountain of footage to wade through, but significant amounts of footage were unfortunately not up to the standards required by the client. Similarly, some of the source footage was withdrawn by the client late in the editing process as they felt it did not provide an accurate portrayal Clement Marfo & The Frontline.

(Please not: the black & white finish to the video was applied by the label after I had submitted my final edit.)

Video Work: Behind The Scenes video for DEVolution’s ‘Good Love’ (Dodge & Fuski remix)

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First thing’s first – I didn’t shoot any of the footage in this video, but I did edit it all together. Warner Bros. Records shot a shedload of behind-the-scenes footage on the video shoot to DEVolution’s ‘Good Love’ (click here if you’re desperate to see the original), and commissioned me to edit it together to fit Dodge & Fuski’s dubstep remix of the same track.

Looks simple enough, right? Well, simple until you realise that the pace and tempo of the dubstep remix is totally different to that of the original, resulting of hours and hours of tinkering about with dozens of split-second clips, making numerous micro-adjustments to the speed of said clips in every direction going, and more quick cuts than I dare think about. And no, after spending 8 hours listening to the same track over and over and over again, I still can’t get this song out of my head.