Wednesday, June 22, 2011

MUSIC VIDEO: Khaos Alberto - Summer of Anger

As well as writing all the stuff I write here and elsewhere, I occasionally make short films. I generally do this because it's an excuse to hang out with friends and have a good time making something that entertains us, but I also try to make the resulting product pretty good and try to learn from it, because I would like to try my hand at doing it more seriously somewhere down the line.

In February 2010, Khaos Alberto approached me with an opportunity to direct a music video for them. We threw around some ideas, tried to come up with a concept that would essentially be a mixture of a short film with a live performance, but that never really congealed into something that I was happy with, so I decided to go for a straight performance video.

I filmed them performing a gig at Bungalows and Bears in Sheffield, which was both hugely exhilarating and hugely frustrating, since I'd never filmed a live performance before and struggled to get all the coverage I needed with my one camera, but over the course of their set I managed to get plenty of good, usable footage, which I set about combing through and breaking down into shots that I thought would work, regardless of what song they were eventually used for.

Choice of song turned out to be a major sticking point with the band, who couldn't decide on which song they wanted to use, and when they did choose a couple of prospective songs, they didn't have recordings that they were especially happy with. This is why, despite filming the gig in March 2010 and having cut up the entirety of the footage into the necessary sections by the April, I did not actually start to edit the video until April 2011.

Once they sent me the song Summer of Anger, I got to work, and despite the process being pretty stop-start on account of work, other projects and holidays, the video came together fairly quickly. I realised that all the footage of them performing the actual song was from behind - I had only one camera on the day, so I had to pick and choose my angles carefully - so I decided to use the footage to try to recreate the woozy, chaotic feel of a Khaos Alberto gig, which I think I managed pretty well.

Here's the video:


Thanks again to Khaos Alberto for the opportunity.

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