We have just had a week busy of music video production here in Glasgow. First we shot a single camera video for Murdo Mitchell, of Advertise Here and Soba Ninja fame, for his track, In Regret. Then another for Nav Sidhu, who is over in Glasgow, from India to record his single titled Love Story with Tigerstyle records and Soldier Sound. Both were great fun to do and had their own challenges. With Murdo that was framing somewhat lower than normal and with Nav it was the fact that the lyrics were not in English.
We have a little history with Murdo. He is a great musician and actor and was the star of our infamous Soba Ninja 3 viral video. He also worked with us for his high school work experience placement, spending a tense week in the Production Attic office. We made him dust everything. He has managed to take up a sizeable chunk of our showreel already. Most people we show it to tend to say I know that boy, he busks in town. He is recognised more often that the cast of Band of Brothers from the Jumping for Heroes shoot or Greame Hunter from the videos for his Barca book or even the First Minister Alex Salmond from when we popped over to film in his office. My point is we had needn’t have bothered with any of that name dropping because Murdo is the only one people seem to recognise! Sigh.
Advertise Here music video filmed in Glasgow
The first project we worked with him on was a music video in Glasgow for his band Advertise Here which we shot across the city centre at a number of popular busking locations. This time, though, Murdo was flying solo with a sad song all about regret. A sad song often requires a sad location so we headed to Whitelee Windfarm just south of Glasgow. It’s a great spot both beautiful and bleak where you can walk the paths connecting 130 wind turbines. Some of the paths even take you directly underneath the blades, fairly daunting. We were lucky to pick a day where most of the turbines were turning so they looked great in the background, the sun even came out to give me a nice sunburn which confused the hell out of everyone I met for the next few days.
The film crew was just myself and Darren but we brought a few toys with us, our 3m long jib with pan and tilt head and a borrowed Glidecam stabilization system. We didn’t to use the jib. I find it works best when swooping past foregrounded objects to get loads of movement or go from the top-bottom or left-right of an object but the turbines are simply too big. We did use the Glidecam for an opening sequence and some shots of Murdo walking as he singing and plays guitar. The rest of the video was shot shoulder mounted. In fact my favourite shots are some where the camera is static and you can see just how big the turbines are.
We had more time than we needed to shoot In Regret as we had a full day at just one one location so we shot single camera and I used it as a chance to see how useful the Glidecam was. I have not directed a lot with Glidecam or any other kind of Steadicam so I was curious to see how stable it was and logistically how long it took to setup, de-rig and how portable it was between shoots. It was fine for this video but a little cumbersome with a small film crew so I decided not to use it for Nav’s video.
To hear how Nav’s video shoot went read part 2.
Murdo will be playing a gig in the Glasgow Apple store later in the summer to mark the launch of his video and the single release on iTunes so stay tuned. Also have a look at this preview for the video.
