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MOTION PICTURE & PRO-VIDEO
music video
ALONE AGAIN,
...NATURALLY
Shooting The Streets for
the hit song Dry Your Eyes
O ne of Britain’s biggest-sell- ing music artists, Mercury
Award nominee Mike Skinner – aka The Streets – has built his reputation on songs that combine musi- cal artistry with a knowing,
urban wisdom.
They typically embody a social
conscience that extends beyond the fripperies of ‘pop’. So when an image is required to illustrate them, some- thing other the bland pop promo norm is called for.
Dry Your Eyes, a touching and painfully honest song about a man com- ing to terms with a relationship ending, was shot by Tat Radcliffe and directed by Johan Renck for Exposure Films. Captured on one hectic night in loca- tions dotted around East London, the shoot comprised some eighteen set-ups.
“We used the 35mm Fuji F-500 tungsten stock,” explains Radcliffe. “A lot of it was shot at night with two cameras and I wanted to see as much as possible. Johan was operating one and I was on the other.
“The idea was to be as quick as possible at each location, picking out little details with our own lights. A lot of it was really down to the framing. That and the locations, where it was really a question of tapping into where we were.”
From a deserted football stadium, to an all night Laundromat, to white- tiled echo of the empty local swim- ming baths, all the sequences empha- sise the heart-breaking poignancy of a man who is now alone and realises it’s his own fault.
“It was a question, really, of record- ing the presence of other people,” Radcliffe adds. “We were obviously photographing Mike, but there was also this sense of the people who had been there, and what they’d left behind. Pencils, newspapers, things like that.
“It was like trying to capture the warmth of somebody’s body after they’ve gone, the sort of human con- tact that the person singing the song is missing out on. Our aim was not to play up the making of it, really. If you did have a sense that we were there, then it might distract from the idea of his being all alone.”
Skinner himself took a keen inter- est in what was shot, and clearly liked what he saw as he has worked with Radcliffe on the subsequent promo for a song with an ominous title for a DP, Blinded By The Lights.
“Mike has a lot of input,” Radcliffe adds, “he has a very particular idea about how something should look, and whether it complements his vision of the song.
“He makes sure that he’s got the right director, but on the shoot he lets the director do what he wants to do. He put his faith in the team completely. And Johan had worked out exactly what Mike would be singing at each location.”
Due to the speed of the shoot, and indeed the speed of the 500T stock, the set up often took advantage of existing light at the locations, which suited Radcliffe and the song which was stripped of the flash and glamour synony- mous with so many MTV style promos.
“In technical terms our first rule was not to give any sign that it had
been lit,” he continues. “To let the exist- ing lights at the location do their bit.
“We were really trying to keep it as naturalistic as possible really, just to keep the truth of how you would expect these locations to appear. Like the Laundromat, which was lit by the actual strip lighting that was there.
“They were all real locations, that was very important, because we were filming things that people had genuinely left behind. Human dust, for example.
“We didn’t have time to second guess anything, that was the exciting thing. It was almost a case of putting the camera down and getting Mike singing. Each frame with him singing in it only lasted for four or five seconds, and then we’d go and find another.
“We chose the 500T for the speed, and it’s fantastic to know that you can shoot anywhere and get an image - to be able to capture what your eye sees at night, really, and at night you do see deep into the shadows.”
The down and dirty honesty of a job like this contrasts with the more stylised selling of a product in a com- mercial. There are artistic considera-
32 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video