When you're shooting in the furthermost reaches of Europe, where the film industry is still in its infancy, it's not uncommon to encounter a more rudimentary style of production: hysterical, but totally ineffectual 1st ADs; crippled, ghetto-ass equipment; somnolent sparks that make AFM's finest seem like the keenest runner, desperate to impress the boss - inevitably daddy's old pal - on their first day; wired, sketchy line producers who for the duration of the pre-production have been telling you 'yes', until the day of the shoot arrives and everything you've asked for fails to materialise, leaving you to smoke a big, fat pipe of 'no'.
Yep shooting abroad can be rough. As a director you have to work twice as hard. Often you're left thanking the lord that the budget was just enough to cover travelling a D.O.P from the UK - or cursing the cunts at the label who beat up your producer so bad that the only way you could afford to fly over a D.O.P was by throwing in your entire fee, which was pretty much fuck all to begin with. Either way a cameraman with an appetite for a fight might just get you out of this shit with a video and your reputation in tact.
And if you're talking the hardest Ross McLennan better pop up in your thoughts as an artist. Because Ross is punk as fuck. He doesn't care. Homeboy's gonna get the shot for you every time. Here he is on the set of The Twang shoot in Montenegro doing some Crocodile Dundee style witchery:
And here he is again with focus puller Joe Maples, another one cast in the warrior mold:
If you're gonna light a job for Atlantic you'd better be prepared to hang out the back of a moving car. Tracking vehicle? Don't be a pussy. Where we're going we don't need roads.
Ed and James make up the directing team DARYL:
The Twang were teasing Ed about the fact that he looks a bit like Paul Calf.
Shooting abroad is an experience, but in the end there's no place like home. For instance last Friday I overheard the following conversation in Best Kebab and discovered that you can get credit there.
"Hello mister Jamal. How are you boss?"
"Yes cuz yes. Can I have meat and chips please cuz? Shake the salt properly yeah. Chili sauce and mayo. No salad you get me cuz. Stick it on my bill please bruv."
Imagine being able to get a doner on tick. Some things in England are just better.
The Twang are my new favourite band. I was in Montenegro with them over the weekend shooting the video for their forthcoming single 'Barney Rubble'. They are proper brum, lovely and funny as hell. Pretty much everything they talk about makes you laugh. A lot. And they have their own peculiar cant; for instance they say 'cloth' instead of garms. "I've always liked my cloth". Shit like that. They also smoke more than my poor grandfather who died of emphysema, his skin worn so thin from the steroid treatment that it would break on the slightest contact like parchment. He smoked bare tabs. The Twang should be sponsored by cigarettes.
We landed in Podgorcia at 9.30 pm, after a full day of travelling that included a 3 hour stop over in Belgrade, and were then confronted by a four hour drive, over mountainous, coiling, single lane roads, to the coastal town of Kotor where we were shooting. A girl from the fixing company with a hairy mole above her top lip met us at the airport and escorted us to an old Yugoslav tour bus parked outside the diminutive terminal. Oh god. The rear shock absorbers were defective, there were no seat belts and the driver was slightly simple. (We later discovered that he was actually a lunatic.) Egor only had one CD on board comprising mainly Serbian 'hits', but also a couple of English language songs, including Charles and Eddie's 'Would I Lie To You' and Jon Secada's 'Just Another Day'. Suicide alley. It came as something of a relief when the production lady very kindly asked, "Are you want some beer?" I kept looking at her mole by mistake. Hello moley. Yes we do want some beer.
After a few cans the banter began in earnest, each band member seamlessly exchanging non sequitur memories and observations, until it felt more like listening to one conjoined voice as opposed to five.
"We played 'how drunk can you get in an hour' at Amsterdam airport. The answer's very. My mate Charlie used to stroke bees. Nutter. And he used to collect bird's feet. See that 'Eagle' sandwich on the menu kid? Fook off. And that wrapper on them biscuits said 'Noblice' man. Raggo man. This is fookin Jon Secada. It is. He was well big man. He used to be Gloria Estefan's backing singer. You know she only had one eye. No. I nearly called her a tripod for a minute then. Fookin hell. I'm reading Shane MacGowan's autobiography. His dad never used to have a bath. When they washed the dirt off him, he died. Kimbo's a ledge man. You seen that Mongolian wrestling? I fookin love Ray Mears. He must have turded it when he saw that bear. Who wants to get ragged by a fookin bear. Imagine looking at that pilled up."
The drive seemed interminable, but we eventually arrived at the hotel 'Splendido' and after a fitful night's sleep I awoke to see the extraordinary panorama of the Bay of Kotor - a fjord, which actually forms part of the Adriatic Sea and is surrounded by colossal, overhanging limestone cliffs. Mental.
Rather than describe what happened on the shoot I'll just let the I'd Prefer Not To TV exclusive 'making of' do the talking. This confirms that I'm the Beagle One of B-roll. Made of pure hi-jinx and beer vision, it includes absolutely no behind the scenes footage from the video, no interviews with the artist or director, no Z One 3 chip business (strictly Flip) and none of the band's music. Fuck yeah.
Ironik's album 'No Point In Wasting Tears' is relaunched today on the back of his top 3 hit 'Tiny Dancer'.
Weary, hungover from Lech time, and staring down the barrel of existential despair, harrowed by self-loathing, paranoia and fear of recrimination - have any of my employers finally got round to reading any of this stool - I often wonder what it would be like to live a simpler life.
And then I remember that Ironik has a Twitter page. Like Alice through the looking glass, I pass, vorpal sword in hand, into an innocent world of celebrity Jabberwocky, where I get to experience the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of Ironik's mind vicariously. This immediately makes me feel happy.
Me and chip nUMBER 3 in national charts, tinchy and n dubz number 1. UK STAND UP!
Ok just going to get ready now to take family, friends and management to Gordon Ramseys restaurant now to celebrate... Hope the foods nice lol
At ramseys! I got the vip top tableeee woo! This restaurant is sick!
At tinchy stryders party rite now. Koind of drunk I wontlie!
If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it dosent, then it was never meant to be.
Was just with JLS . Cool guys! The school was maddd! On my way to film for chris moyles quiz night show noww!
Uh oh - news of the world outside my home - what have I done now lol!
I wanna go to a Maze...
And still in shock coz elton john rang me earlier!
Where's dane bowers...
Watching madeleine was here...
Poetry of the empty. I could read it all day. Twit. Twit. Twoo. Where the fuck is Dane Bowers?
On Thursday I fly to Podgorica, the capital city of Montenegro, which nestles above the Zeta plain, a vast, fertile lowland once home to the Eurasian Avar tribe of warriors. I'm there to make a video for The Twang's forthcoming single 'Barney Rubble'. Claire is actually commissioning it, but is unable to attend the shoot due to ATP commitments. DARYL from Pulse Films are directing.
I'm going to be flying on JAT Airways. Despite being ranked 96th among the 112 international carrier members of the IATA (International Air Transport Association) in 1987, JAT has an appalling safety record. Their most notorious accident occurred on 26th January 1972 when flight 367 broke up over Srbská Kamenice in Czechoslovakia - now the Czech Republic - following a mid air explosion. All the passengers and crew members were killed except for Vesna Vulović, a Serbian flight attendant, who fell 33,333 feet and then crawled miraculously from the twisted fuselage, suffering only a fractured skull and two broken legs. (According to the Guinness Book of Records, this is the highest fall ever to be survived without a parachute.)
In Your Face managed to track Vesna down to her new home in Dalston and politely attempted to solicit an interview with her, to which she replied, through a miasma of fortified wine:
Sometimes you've just got to post something to get your last post out of the firing line.
Although it's a few weeks old now, here's the video for Enter Shikari's new single 'Juggernauts'. Shane Davey directed it; Gail Davey produced it; and Claire commissioned the shit out of it. This video is blowing up all over MTV2, NME TV, Scuzz and Amp. Heavy.
As we're all painfully aware, making music videos is an inexact science; you can line up a great director with a hot idea that on paper is perfectly synergetic with the marketing campaign and the artist's depraved vision, pencil Ra to light it, talk to Mohammed about Allah grading it in Spirit 1, and it still doesn't mean shit - sometimes you just deliver a video that the label hates more than colorectal cancer.
Only a handful of people in the world truly understand the horror of an offline presentation to the label that goes badly. They're called video commissioners. The room goes silent. Even the most garrulous marketing manager shuts the fuck up. Nobody looks at you. "I'll play it again" you say optimistically. A few people mumble and walk out half way through. The cocky street team assistant, who you loathe - jumped up little cunt - damns you with faint praise: "I really like the make-up in the wides". Your MD watches aghast, shaking his head, fuming, close to tears, and at the end, after a beat, he quietly passes his verdict, "it doesn't even go with the song".
Last week you were lauded as some kind of prodigy. This week even the drones on the I.T Helpdesk are talking shit about you. Hold tight home slice. I know things look bad right now, but they're about to get easier because here's the In Your Face guide to dealing with delivering a video that the label hate.
First things first: don't panic. I've heard of commissioners crying in offline showings. Don't cry baby. Don't even well up. And resist the temptation to stave in the A&R man's fleshy, inane, blubber face. Go to your happy place. This is where you can finally draw on all the years of therapy, all your visits to the guru in Varanasi. What was that incantation again? Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. And breathe. You cool? I'm cool.
The next objective is to get the fuck out of the room as quickly as possible. In the face of a barrage of arbitrary, backward, inarticulate critiques say things like "that's a really interesting viewpoint, although I don't necessarily agree" and "I think that's perhaps something we can address in the edit" and "we're obviously looking at a compressed picture - once we've onlined it'll look much better". Calmly bring the meeting to a close and, with all the aplomb you can muster, walk out like the OG you know you are. If you're feeling bold, you could even try a Stevie Williams crotch grab:
OK. You've bought yourself some breathing space. At this juncture it's important to remember that just because the label detests the video doesn't mean that it's shit. There are countless examples of label hated videos that have gone on to win MVA, MTV, MVPA or D&AD awards, garnered billions of youtube hits and generated reams of drooling articles in the press. But you need to be honest with yourself. Find a quiet room and with your coldest, most objective Stephen Hawking eye watch the video a few times. If it really is a stone cold turkey then I'm afraid you're just gonna have to take the beats. However, if the video has even a few redeeming qualities then you can front it out. The following simple survival techniques will ease your pain faster than a line of Lemsip.
Lie low for a few days. While the great offline debate is raging you need to be as far away from the office as possible. Out like Swayze. Go and see that rep who you've been blanking for the past year - even if they are based in Pinner. Pretend to be at a telecine. No one at a label knows what the fuck a telecine is. So how are they gonna know that one doesn't last for 3 days? Exactly. This is your time now. Obviously the purpose of being out of the office is to avoid your prowling, lurking MD who wants nothing more than to have a heart to heart with you, to begin the gruesome post-mortem, to find out where the video went wrong, and to discuss what measures can be instituted to ensure that it doesn't happen again. Long. Long. Long. You need this about as much as a punch in the face.
Right. You've successfully dodged your boss, styled it through a tortuous offline approval process, and finally delivered the video. We now enter the next phase. Although it's counter-intuitive, you're gonna have to spend some time with the TV promotions department. Buy them a Bakewell tart. Make them tea. Compliment them on what a great job they do under exacting circumstances. Because a few good TV adds are going to make everybody feel a whole lot better about the video. Who cares that no one watches videos on telly anymore. Record company executives don't know this. And if your video goes straight on the Box playlist while the latest Kasabian opus only gets spot plays, let everyone know. What? Who said this was a popularity contest? You need to take care of bizzo. And if that means turning the misfortune of others to your advantage, so be it.
There's also this new website called Youtube that you might want to look at. (Yes, despite all that PRS prattle, you can still find videos on Youtube - especially on artists' channels.) Even if your video's taking a battering in the comments section, you can usually find a couple of lonely crackheads who just "Luuuv the vid... LOL... so cool :)". Cunts. But you need these cunts. Compile a few of the comments into an email and send an update to your MD. "The video's getting a great reaction online". Don't be afraid to make these up if you need to bolster your case as most record company executives don't actually know how to turn the tinternets on. Make sure you use the 'Statistics & Data' section too. This will normally throw up some apocryphal honour for your video. '#53 - Top Favourited (This Month) - Music'. Safe. Before you know it people will think they've got a bona fide interweb phenomenon on their hands.
By now about 10 days will have elapsed. The heat's beginning to subside. Thanks to your initiative, the general feeling around the video will have improved. But you can't let up - it's important to cover all angles. And to achieve this you're gonna have to blame someone else. There's always a fall guy. You just need to find your Lee Majors. Invite the artist's marketing manager into your office and say you need to talk to them confidentially. Act poignant and weepy: "You know, I haven't told anyone else this, but the director was actually drunk when he arrived on set. It was awful". Now tell everyone in the office the same thing, including the work experience guy in the post room. Of course the label will never work with that director again, but fuck it - what you gonna do?
After 2 weeks your MD will have already moved onto 'The Next Big Thing', you'll be working on another single, the previous video will feel like a lifetime ago, and by following these guidelines you should still have a job. Remember, it's only videos. No one died.
