FINE TIME

The band had asked me to look at the work of Gerard de Thame. He has made some music videos and they especially liked on he did for Black. It was shot in black and white film and high speed to produce a slow motion. The video was beautiful so I contacted him through his production company Helen Langridge Associates. Anita Overland was his producer.

I looked at Gerard's work and it all was pretty much the same. I also noticed that all the tracks were ballads. I thought it might be good for Gerard to work with a track so unlike his other music videos that it might force him to do something different.

Gerard did not like the track, but since this was a band that would allow him to do something different, and they would not be involved in the video, he came up with a good idea. He referenced an Andy Warhol film “The Thirteen Most Beautiful Women”. I knew and respected some of Warhol's work but had not seen this film. It was easily described: Warhol shot 2 1/2 minute spools of 16mm film of the faces of friends sitting on a stool. He called them screen tests. Then he just spliced the films together.

Well, the idea was good but I felt Gerard was really not in to making the video. So I suggested we do a test on video. I cannot recall what exactly was done, but it did not work and we decided that he would not make the video.

It was coming on to Christmas and we were running out of time. I was in London to make the video and I thought to call Richard Heslop. I knew Richard from his work with Derek Jarman whose work I respect a lot, and a person I also miss, as does the world. Richard was known for his especially beautiful Super-8 work.

We did not have a large budget and Richard was really up for shooting something around a Christmas theme. We were in a bar in Soho and met a young Asian woman whom Richard invited to be in the video. The other girl was Richard's girlfriend at the time. The young boy was his friend's, Sarah Myles', son. I cannot remember whose dog it was.

We shot in a shooting stage and all went smoothly. Richard operated a 16mm camera. In the edit Richard was in total control. It was there that he devised the “pill”. This obviously related to the drug Ecstasy which was so popular at the time, and which had a direct relation to the song. I cannot remember whether it was a coincidence that Peter Saville used pill imagery for the sleeve, but you could say “something was in the air”.

I was nervous in the edit as Richard created a lot of effects in post-production. This was not my style, and I did not know much about it. But it all turned out fine, even magical. It has a dark edge to it that I like. If you look closely at the montage of Super-8 footage you can see Richard with liquid or such coming in to or going out of his mouth.

Last week in London I ran in to the Sarah Myles on the street. She had just been thinking of me because she remembered we shared the same birthday (date, not year). It is good to be back in touch with a fellow filmmaker.

The band invited Richard to make another video for “Spooky”. I had nothing to do with the production, but I quite like the video. Richard himself has a big presence in the video as does his Super-8 footage which looks to be mostly from Asia.