We loved working on this music video for Tilly Valentine. It was a real passion project, shot over 1 day in an awesome location with an awesome crew. Take a look below and see what we got up to.
The Process
Not all of our jobs come with a budget, and sometimes we choose to do things that feel like a special project. Bringing a small collection of talented collaborators together, we managed to produce a video for less than £500. That's right, less than £500.
Over one day, we shot this peformance and featured dance video in an empty ex-ballroom space in north london. Dressed in some plastic and hessian dust sheets and featuring a lonely piano in the middle of the space, Tilly's beautiful song resonates around the space.
We shot this video with our own camera eco system, and a set of Zeiss Super Speeds and a Fuji Zoom (for those of you who like technics). Lighting was simple but effective, using negative fill where neeeded, Astera tubes for extra punch, and of course the great big sky above to motivate our lighting plan.
In some shots we also used some mirrors to bounce lighting around the space.
Challenges
Producing a music video on a budget is often challenging, but we find it pushes us to be more creative, or come up with alternatives to challenges.
When filming Angus (the dancer) we struggled initially to find the look we were going for. We wanted to try and seperate the two worlds; the dancers dreamy world and the lonely piano world where Tilly sings.
After some tweaking and some testing, we decided to crank down the white balance on camera, and spread some vaseline over the lens. Why? It gives an unusual dreamy effect and warping to the edges of the image and feels very other-worldly.
With some final tweaking in the colour grade and some post-fx to accentuate the warping, we had our look. Challenge = overcome.
This project was awesome fun. And we're really pleased with the result. It even made it to Times Square in New York of all places, looping on one of the big screens on 45th Street.
