At the beginning of this project, while compiling all the tasks we would have to undertake, we decided to divide the roles into more manageable areas, rather than have all of us trying to do the same thing. I was in charge of filming, Luke was lighting (gotta love the alliteration), Jenny was production, and Andrea was editing. The editing process was a long one for Andrea to take on by herself, and as ended up happening with all our roles, we all tried to help as best we could, but she had final call on most of the decisions. As such, I have only just seen the music video I have spent the last 6 weeks making.

It’s insane.

I think of how far I’ve come and where we started, this is something I hadn’t even imagined. Its strange to compare it to our very first pitch, because the bare bones are the same but the fleshed out parts have changed about six times as we encountered problems, solved them, came up with better solutions, then scrapped it entirely to go a different direction.

I still have pictures on my phone from our very first meeting when we heard the song and then wandered around the back of building 9 at RMIT to scope grungey industrial locations, thinking we could have them, some forest and maybe, just maybe some studio scenes. Didn’t end up doing that.

I have photos of tranquil blue and purple tinted forests that we thought we could use as inspiration for our colour grading saved onto my computer that we didn’t end up going with. Instead as soon as we saw the singers bright orange hair and the effect of the setting sun in lighting the forest scenes, we knew that we’d be better off going with a warmer colour gradient.

We’ve scrapped a lot of ideas because we didn’t have the skills to make them work, like the slow motion of fabric and powders blowing about. I think Jenny still has the powders we made before scrapping the idea. Instead we came up with other things to fill up spaces, like the shots of Andrea smearing herself with grapes, which I honestly think works better with the absurdity and strangeness of the music and the video.

Our initial concept, stripped of all the ‘hows’ and focussing just on the ‘what’ has survived this entire process. The singers, running through the forest, interspersed with coven-ish images, dark ladies surrounding them in revelry.

As with any project I’m unhappy with some of the things, mostly the things that didn’t end up going in rather than anything that did. I’m disappointed that a lot of the forest shots were unusable, as I felt we could have used more variety, and probably my biggest regret is the failure of one particular shot.

We had a dozen gorgeously witchy extras, all different and yet all cohesive, we had them lined up so they were all perfectly in focus, with good lighting, and then we went to pan across them and…they were all different heights. It was either do a normal pan and have some cropped out of the top and bottom of the frame, or break up our beautiful smooth pan to jerk up and down to get them in frame. I tried as hard as I could to get them all in frame, but in the end it just didn’t work out and I regret that.

And yet I’m so proud of what we’ve come up with. I think the fast paced editing works perfectly with the frantic pace of the song, and the shots of the ‘witches’ dancing are perfectly in line with what the clients wanted, which was a modern coven vibe made up of a medium sized group of girls, preferably dancing. We’ve got that filled. As with anything, there are things that I’d change or wish I had more time to do, but overall I think this is the best piece of media I’ve had a hand in creating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uco_wDitX40&feature=em-share_video_user