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How we made this music video
27 September 2021
Monoki's creative director Paul is a frustrated musician.
"I was in bands as a kid, I played multiple instruments but, on the whole, was terrible at all of them. However it was a childhood dream to one day work in the music industry in some form and I grew up in the 1980's the era that defined the music video."
Now Paul can say he works in the music industry. Monoki reguarly work with musicians filming live content and fully formed music videos. However, this project for award winning soul singer Nate James was a huge challenge.
"The video for Chasing The Sun was made during the second Covid lockdown in 2021. With Nate living in Scotland and me in south east England, shooting and directing a music video 300 miles apart was going to be tough. Oh and Nate wanted it to look like we were in Ibiza ... when we clearly coudn't be".
The brief
So Nate drops a summer anthem ready for release in, well, the summer. It's a great song and demands a great video filled with all things summer. Under normal conditions that's pretty easy. Fly to Ibiza for the weekend, find a quiet spot on the beach, start filming. However there were a few problems.
- It was April.
- The UK is in full lockdown due to the Covid pandemic. No travelling outside your town, let alone to somewhere remotely sunny.
- Nate lives in Scotland, 300 miles north of me in Essex.
So how do we make a video that looks summery, in April, in Scotland with me 300 miles away?
The filming
First off, Scotland is blessed with some stunning beaches and, although it would be cold, if we were lucky and got up early enough we thought we may be able to pull it off. Apart from Nate being freezing cold there was a chance we could make it look warmer than it actually was.
Our second problem was how to film it. Luckily Nate knew of a local wedding photographer who also made a bit of video. I met up with Austin Mitchell via Zoom and we got planning.
The difficult part of making a video in this way is, although we can plan what shots we'd like and I could come up with a rough storyboard based around the song. We were really relying on what Austin could come up with on the day and how kind the Scottish weather was going be.
It could have very easily all gone wrong.
Nate and Austin chose the stunning Silver Sands Beach in Aberdour. and Nate's friend was kind enough to join them to look after make up. So after giving Austin a wish list of shots all that was left to do was wait for the weather to break. An early start was booked and we were blessed with the most beautiful Scottish sunrise.
It's always hard editing someone else's footage because before anything can be done I have to look through everything and then, much like a jigsaw puzzle, work out which bits work best at certain points through the song. Thankfully I had some great footage and drone shots to work with.
On first hearing Chasing The Sun
I picked up on the hand clap rhythms that reminded me a little of The Cure's song Close To Me. I decided that aspect would make a great motif through the video with some short choppy edits between footage to pick out the rhythm.
The final and most time consuming task was the colour grading. This is the process of manipulating the colours on every single shot so the whole thing looks similar.
Remember this is Scotland. Even though we had an amazing morning the shots all looked very blue which could have made the finished video appear cold (which it was). So I had to bring the Ibiza to Scotland by adding lots of orange and yellow tones to Austin's footage. I also took some of the footage back to almost black and white to add some drama and provide some strong contrast to the hand clapping edits.
The reception
I think this is the best video I made with Nate. In particular because of the problems we had to overcome to make it happen.
Many people have since asked me how we made it and did we indeed fly somewhere hot. that's a big win for me because that's exactly the look we were aiming for. I can still remember Nate's excited voice on seeing the first edit and is surprise at how Mediterranean the finished product looked. The only small give away to how cold it actually was is that you can occasionally see some warm air smoking it's way our of Nate's mouth as he was singing.
Want me to bring your music alive?
I continue to work with Nate on his video projects and would love to do the same with you.
If you'd like to discuss bringing your music alive with a great video - click on the button below and let's talk.
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