The brand: Kia. The concept: stage a show for a bunch of Clean Bandit fans that aren't expecting it. This came in from our American guys, who'd already done something brilliant with Weezer out in L.A., so the bar was set high. We decided to create a space that echoed Clean Bandit's record, and to invite their fans down to film a portion of their next music video - making clear at all times that the band wouldn't be there. So when the band did turn up in the middle of the event (in a Kia, of course) and the proceed to play a song, the reaction was quite something. The unstoppable Blair Barnette provided the art direction, whilst Kenny Cavey & Hannah Wainwright held the ship together as director and producer on the show. There were a few very late night wranglings working out just how we were going to find somewhere that we could drive a car into the middle of a crowd in a prismatic mirror jungle that we had to build from scratch.
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At LoveLive we worked with HP (the tech company, not the sauce) on a whole series of concerts and musical activities. This was my last whilst at the helm at LoveLive, and a suitable final chapter. It involved Star Wars (tick!), a remote controlled BB8 droid from Star Wars (tick!) and Arri cameras (tick!) - all in the name of getting backstage at a Years + Years show at Koko in London. Our presenters (Ebony and Chai) nailed it, and the band were totally into it too. Beyond our wonderful team, I have to assume that Star Wars has that effect on a lot of people... Directed & Exec Produced the livestream of Madonna from the Paris Olympia. With 1.7M people tuning in for the live broadcast, this was one of the bigger ones. Plus, you know, it's Madonna. It was great to work with something so iconic and choreographed - much more emphasis on symmetry and punching in on the straight-down-the-line.
The highly talented Danny Tull is to credit for the VOD edit, and timely cues for the live-direction... Exec Produced the digital Brits in 2013 - providing sessions, formats & behind-the-scenes pieces from the first announcements of the critics' choice to the days following the show. Our content pushed more than 30 million views on the Brits YouTube channel, and 88k subscribers, Plus, it was awesome. My favourite features were the journeys to the awards - we followed along with 4 acts on the journey to the event. Rudimental & Paloma Faith vids below... The terrestrial broadcast of the awards rightly plays up front for everyone's attention, and features some brilliant moments - and we took and repackaged that stream as we went for exactly that reason. That didn't stop us from making sure our own coverage of the events and red carpet wasn;t equally as stellar, though. We has Zane Lowe giving us the backstage tour, and Paloma herself took a stint on the red carpet for us... It was a bigger job than the average: 40 crew on the day, live-feeds, videos being turned out at a rate of knots, and all directed brilliantly by Kenny Cavey, with the LoveLive social team making it the most successful digital Brits to-date.
With two days' notice, we pulled together both the official documentary of Rihanna's 777 Tour (7 Cities in 7 Days on a Boeing 777), and a livestream of her London Forum show. Hectic doesn't cover it. The documentary went out to TX in both UK & USA, and was sold internationally by BBC Worldwide. We also cut a feature version, appropriately 77minutes long, which had a limited theatrical run and DVD. Working with Rihanna's stage moves as a director is gold dust: unpredictable enough to keep your permanently on your toes, and constantly delivering the energy that keeps the edit snappy without over-cutting. Exec-produced and directed this live-stream from the Fonda, live to YouTube, to launch Nick's new release, "Push The Sky Away". We worked closely with Nick's creative director's, Iain & Jane, who were incredible. They came up with the idea of switching from black-and-white to colour mid-set. Nick played the new record front-to-back for the first half of the set, and then went into a blinding back-catalogue second-half of set. And on the first note of the first song of the second half, we switched from black-and-white to full colour in the OB. Looking back on twitter it was great to see people responding to something in real time. We made extensive use of the jib shot in this show, but kept it long, slow, smooth, and slightly uneasily floating... matching up tension in the music to tension in the cuts - letting the stage do the talking. Also, Warren Ellis is an absolute legend.
Kyla's excellent song, Hummingbird, was the very first 360° / VR video I made.
The treatment was worked out with the highly talented De La Muerte team of directors, Debbie and Liz, and involved splitting the sphere into 3 parts - in which similar scenes of action moved forwards and backwards in time, or in slow motion. We shot using a stereoscopic pairing of RED Dragon cameras - which means the end footage we have is crazily high resolution.
It's best viewed in VR in the Inception app (available for cardboard on iOS and Android, as well as for Rift and Gear VR), where you get the full stereoscopic effect - the 3D depth on the wings in particular is probably my favourite bit. But you can also see it in 360 on YouTube - link below.
Shout outs also to:
- Mike Bradley - who AD'd this on his second day of work for Inception. - Visualise - whose team did excellent work in bringing the whole production together - ATC Management & Kyla & her team - who were lovely - Burning Reel - who represent the De la Muerte directors and production managed the set |
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January 2018
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