I was very pleased to get an opportunity to shoot the debut video of the local musical wunderkind*  Natasha Haws, and only my second promo  music video.
We discussed possible locations and style for the performance footage. Initially I was thinking of doing it in my studio where we could have complete control of the lighting and it would have been warm.The only place I was sure I did not want to film was on stepping stones. Eventually, we decided on shooting at the top of a fire  escape in the center of Newcastle, on a cold and cloudy February day – it would have been great to have some sunshine but  we are not in California. We filmed all afternoon, Natasha was super patient and we managed to get all the footage we needed. One of the highlights of the day was the  improvisational skills used making a substitute guitar strap from some plastic fishing wire which was used on a previous photo shoot to tie balloons

The dancing was Natasha’s idea I had not filmed anything like that before. I did some research, and we done a some run throughs on the day of the shoot so we could all warm up.  It took all day to get the footage we needed. On a separate note the video was filmed opposite ( on the other side of the river)  the Music Box studios where the music was recorded – a nice piece of symmetry. The time and effort spent rehearsing was evident on the day – the dancers done a phenomenal job, and were an absolute pleasure to work with. The choreography and thought in matching the dance to the song works incredibly well.

The editing took hours and hours,  special thanks to Natasha and Scott who came to my studio and helped out by  selecting the dance footage ( without ever complaining about my coffee making skills).

Making a video is all about teamwork, I also must thank  Daniel Robson, and Martin Emery for help on the shoot – they are always enthusiastic about getting the right results without ever complaining – thank you !

I know I made mistakes ( we all do), I am real fan of reflective writing and have made notes about everything that I done right and wrong – overall I am happy with the result, although I have to say I felt nervous about other people’s opinion. So far people have been very kind and positive about the video. Overall I hope we done this beautiful song justice – thank you Natasha.

The video is here:

We have also done a live session in my studio – here is Constant Fairytale

* I hope I am not being pretentious – I just seen an episode of Mad Men where Peggy Olsen is described the same way