So, I approached Tracey - and she had a song in mind, that she had written, called 'Pink Skies' - as she started describing the lyrics and the feel to the song, I started thinking of a film piece that would include clips of Tracey looking up to a sky that fades to pink as she sings the last line of the chorus . . . near by is Caergwrle Castle, which is set on a hill with fabulous views and great sky vista's from it - it occurred to me that this could be a great location for at least the bulk of the video..
I spoke to Dave and Gemma, and they were very keen to explore this further, so Tracey e mailed us not only 'Pink Skies', but several other of her songs. Dave, Gem and I discussed them, and agreed that whilst we liked the narrative to 'Pink Skies', the song needed to be made 'edgier' to fit in with the location we had in mind - Tracey agreed, and obligingly, she quickly came up with a punchier version.
Meanwhile, we booked the little sound studio at Regent Street, and continued to discus the song and possible video to go with it - we now had a copy of the lyrics, and between us came up with the idea that the story in the song gave us an opportunity to introduce a parallel edit to the video - again, Tracey was a star and was more than willing to go along with this.
So - first things first - record the sound track - OH DEAR ! The small studio at Regent street just wasn't equipped to provide the standard we wanted. We had a frustrating hour or two, when each time we tried to record separate vocals and guitar, the equipment kept re-recording either the guitar track on top of the vocals, or vice-versa. We called for help, and bless Simon, he spent an age trying to sort it for us - to no avail - its the way the system was set up . So, following Simon's advice, we contacted Plas Coch campus where they have a fully equipped studio, and were able to be put in touch with two students who were willing to help us record a really good version of the track - big thanks to Tom and Jonny .
Tracey also brought along her mate, Bryn, who had agreed to play the acoustic guitar and provide backing vocals.
It was a fabulous experience - amazing to discover just how much work goes into recording even a song that has minimal instruments involved. The vocal work was recorded several times, and then 'layered', both for main vocals, and harmonies, to produce a 'rich sound' and by the end of the night, all of us were dancing with glee at how brilliant it sounded.
Thrilled with the results, the next step was to record the main part of the video footage - so having (in our wisdom) chosen a day where we were sure the temperature matched the North pole, we set off up to the castle . We had placed the track on an mp3 player with a very discreet ear piece, so Tracey could sing along to it as we filmed, and this would hopefully ensure that we would get the lip sync right when it came to editing the video.
The Location
Don't think Tracey is used to roughing it - she isn't sure where to plug the straighteners in!
Dave and Gemma set up some shots
We filmed the song several times through, using a variety of shots and locations around the castle, from CU to extreme LS , then did a whole series of filler shots.
Oh, and Gemma managed to get herself stuck - and that's all I am saying about that!
By the time we were finished, frozen does not describe it!
Then, time to film the parallel edit. The song is about a woman who has walked away from a relationship with a man who drinks, heavily, and about how she has now found her 'freedom'- her 'Pink Skies'. We decided it would work well to have a parallel edit running that showed 'flash backs' to incidents in the relationship. Now Tracey is an extremely gorgeous - and also, an extremely tall young woman, so we needed to find an extremely tall man to play the part of the man - and who could be better than Tracey's real life husband, Jamie - who as well as being tall, is also cheap - and by that, I don't mean anything nasty - merely that lovely bloke as he is, he was prepared to work for a few bottles of my husbands home brew :)
So, we set up an afternoons filming at my house - and it went well - especially once Jamie got a few bottles of my DH's 'brewed in the shed' ale down him :) It was also, like the rest of this project, really good fun - both Jamie and Tracey had endless patience, re-shooting scenes where I spotted a continuity glitch (Gemma and Dave handled the camera's, I tried to keep an eye on continuity) - I did make one mistake, when Jamie reminded me that for the sake of 'continuity' it was long past the time when his glass should have been re-filled, but on the whole, I'd say everyone involved did a pretty good job . . . even when Gemma innocently remarked that a 'shaft of sunlight' was causing problems with a particular shot, and we all ended up on our knees laughing as Jamie roared 'Ha - she said shaft' - we'll blame that one on the home brew, I think:)
So now - the editing . . .
Not as easy as I was hoping - syncing the film to the pre-recorded track was fiddly to say the the least - but the lessons we had learnt in editing the short film we had made were invaluable - and the practise certainly had helped me speed up the time it took me to do my share of the editing! At the end of day one, most of the footage was in, and Dave and I decided to come in for a couple of hours the following day to finish it off - leaving us a whole week before deadline to hopefully incorporate the special effects that we hoped to use.
The following day saw us putting in around 4 hours work, and finished off the basic edit. We encountered problems with 'shaky' images, due to us trying tracking shots over the very un-even ground at the castle, but still had enough footage for what we hoped were a series of interesting and appropriate sequences within the final piece. The knowledge I had gained doing the short horror film, of using Final Cut, was invaluable, and showed in the length of time it took us to edit - the process was much faster ! We wished we had had the information that Dave Robinson had given us in a session a week or so before, about setting the white balance on the camcorders - we had to do a fair bit of 'tweaking' with levels and colour balance for some of the film sections we had. And again, we realised that we have to make more use of the tripod - either that, or improve the steadiness of our grip during hand held shots! And we realised that we had become much 'pickier' with ourselves - little 'glitches' and mistakes that we would have maybe tolerated (or not even noticed) in previous projects now stuck out like sore thumbs, and we put in the effort to correct them !
Even without effects, I was really pleased with the basic edit. I felt the footage we had went well with the narrative of the song, and the sound quality made the time and effort spent in the recording studio more than worth it. The whole video is really about the song, no big gimmicks, just we hope a decently filmed video to accompany a great track - Tracey performs it so well !
Tracey had agreed that we could put the finished video on youtube, so after the first edit, I started spreading the word on various web sites that I visit, and amongst friends and family, asking them in advance to go look at the song when we published it - I wanted to generate as many hits, and as much feedback as I could.
The next day, the one little effect we wanted to add took - oh - all of 10 minutes - thanks to Dave Kelly's help :)
So - here it is - the finished video.
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