New music video! Una And The Lion.
We're pretty chuffed with this one. Proper cameras, proper crew and a generous handful the best mates you could ask for (coincidentally all professional actors), aren't we lucky.
Even though the original riff and eventual lyrics to this song were separated by almost a year, they were always handled with the same mood in mind. I guess I was watching a lot of David Lynch, Darron Arronofsky and M.Night Shamalam at the time and wanted to create a similar dark, unsettling world, yet still somewhat accessible, cult-like and just plain cool. So when Riccardo Fusetti emailed us out of the blue and basically read my mind we were in.
It's always tough deciding to collaborate outside of the comfort of our little creative partnership. It's just simpler when there's only two, usually agreeing opinions. We know how the other ticks. But we are aware that this can also make things stale. We are also aware we lack the equipment and know how to create a professional grade video, and Riccardo was offering just that and for free! Sure we've made several videos on the cheap and they work, they fit the song. That's because those songs are a bit tongue and cheek and they speak of no-hopers, wastrels and can't-be-arsed'ers, so it makes sense to paint them in similar colours or simply just an undercoat. Una And The Lion, on the other hand demands a gloss finish. It oozes tackiness and sleaze but of the highest degree and I don't think we could have achieved that with our DIY style.
Riccardo had come across the song on Tom Robinsons Fresh Off The Net which had been selected as on of the weeks Fresh Faves. He then emailed us with his proposal. We'd been getting a lot of unsolicited emails since the release of the EP from different music industry leeches claiming how much they loved us only to discover their love came at a price a few emails in, so we were wary. The fact that he was still keen after seeing our out turned pockets was a good enough sign to meet him in person.
We met him in London Fields and his impassioned proposal won us over, also his admission to being drunk from one bottle of bud assured us that this guy was not going to be just another excuse to get pissed.
The subsequent month was dominated by pre-production planning. If it wasn't for Ric's discipline of choosing a date and sticking to it, the idea could've easily joined the back of the queue in idea limbo. We went on three location scouts around London at night, which proved quite difficult, for what seemed like a great location outside of the car, often looked naff from the backseat POV, which is where the whole shoot takes place from. We also had to find places that would be relatively safe for the actors to be roaming about in costume in London in the middle of a weekend night. This was my biggest worry. Thankfully we managed to find a couple of places (Our Bermondsey rehearsal studio and Janet and Matts communal warehouse compound by Finsbury Park) that were private and fenced off from the public.
There was one location, however which we found the night before the shoot that made us fear for our lives. A creepy little spot by Walthamstow cemetery. It was perfect for shooting the 'Long Arm People' (creatures dressed in black, with abnormally long arms and chilling white masks) as they emerge from the darkness and surround the car. But when we got there on the night, Tim and Paul were talking to a wide-eyed, fast talking irishman in the middle of the road who claimed he owned the cemetery and that we'd have to pay him 20% of the films box office if we wanted to film there. He also offered to provide guns and horses and any drugs we wanted including "brown". Declining this generous offer we were then subject to numerous visits by a faceless, dark van, bathing us in it's high beams for a minute then skidding away. Whether it was the irishman or just a pack of confused 'doggers' we made the call to abandon the shoot when the dark van started yelling threats at us.
Other than that, most of the footage was of various characters within the car. In the end we wound up with more footage than what we knew what to do with. We could've easily made a separate music video for each of the characters (which we still may do), as each actor gave us so much to work with. One of the sequences which we had to can was a stint through a drive-through carwash. Turns out there's very few automatic carwash services in London, they're all hand wash. We did find one, however, down Old Kent Road nearing at the wee hours of Sunday morning. I was already anxious about putting this brand new hire car through this rickety old machine so when it suddenly stopped mid wash, I was really bricking it. 10 minutes of tired debate later we decided to squeeze ourselves out from under the frozen buffer arm.
Anyway we did it and we have a pretty decent film to show for it. But of course it wouldn't have been achievable without everyones hard work, time and generosity for which we feel overwhelmingly blessed.
Crew:
Music- Circus of Bones Director- Riccardo Fusetti Producer- Teodosia Dob DoP- Brandon Lee Weston Production- Wild Island Films
Cast: Kappa Llewellyn Doug Colling Lauren Barnes Tim Metcalfe-wood Jorma Tracini Simon Kingsly Janet Mayer Ami Benton Matthew Laurence Paulo the Dog Eddie Mann Paul Thompson
Thank you and enjoy.
Eddie and Paul, Circus of Bones xo