Two days ago I had the pleasure of shooting alongside Carol Hodge; a UK singer and songwriter who is based in Yorkshire.
We shot a video for a song off her new album, and we met for the first time on the shoot day too.
Even though she’s local and in my town and we share many mutual friends on the local music scene, our paths hadn’t ever crossed.
The energy of the day was really good. I’m so pleased I was as organised as I could be with everything, and it ran to schedule.
I managed to execute the look and style on-screen pretty close to what I saw in my head. Which is unusual as often it’s a trick and a half trying to get what you see in your head on screen.
We had a decent start with a 9am load in to the venue.
We filmed at The Parish pub - one of my favourite places which pulled through a terrible time over Covid lockdown.
But the pub pulled through and came out even stronger in an amazing new building with an incredible live music venue and super cool bar!
We had a bit of prep to do in the room before filming;
…mainly blocking out the extra daylight from the entrance way. Here is sound/lighting guru Edd, chipping in to help secure it down. What a champion.
A metric shit ton of gaffer tape was needed to keep the fabric on the wall. I think it must have been a damp patch of wall or something. It kept coming off. But we kept on applying. Liberally.
After setting up the lights, set, camera and wardrobe - we cracked on with the performance shots of the band on the stage.
I know what I want out of these kind of scenarios so this was shot relatively quickly.
I shot everything on my GH5 in 4K on the Ronin-S.
It’s a nifty and nimble setup that allowed me to move freely and get the shots I wanted. I shot mainly on a 11-16mm Tokina lens (which I really like) then some other moments on a 50mm.
So there’s a nice mix of wide and tight angles.
After the stage performance I shot some solo moments with Carol.
These solo bits were away from the stage area, and they aim to punctuate the videos mood as the songs shifts between an eclectic mix of verses, middle8’s and choruses.
It a fantastic rollercoaster of a song, and I hope the vision of my video does it justice.
In those solo shots with Carol we got out the glitter confetti and made a bit of a mess.
We kept shooting through to 6.30pm, which was a solid day of rushing around on my feet; moving, lifting, thinking.
I was shattered. And it didn’t help that I was developing a cold too, so I felt like total crap.
And I still do.
But it was all worth the effort.
When I’m in the thick of it I really do love making music videos.
I’ll be editing it all together over the coming few days and I look forward to sharing the final video when it’s ready!
