Shane Meadows directed the latest pop promo for Jake Bugg on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. It’s a faux-comedy, Benny Hill style film for the track Slumville Sunrise. Obviously wanting to capitalise on the Blackmagic link, Blackmagic did an email Q&A with Shane Meadows and asked if I wanted to do anything with it.
Whilst I wouldn’t usually post something where the motivation for the interview is to market a company or product, the interview with Meadows is interesting, informative for anyone considering using Blackmagic cameras, and well worth a read. Here are the highlights:
What led to you directing this video? How do you and Jake know each other? I first met Jake at a Stone Roses gig in London, he was supporting them and I’d heard his music and loved it. Following that I saw him a few times in Nottingham and knew we had to collaborate on something.
How did the concept of the video come about? Having spoken to Jake, I knew he was interested in doing a bit of acting so I had that in my mind. The video idea itself came from images brought up listening to the song; it’s really catchy and has a great rhythm, so it came together through that. Until I had a story and shape for the video I wanted, I didn’t run it past Jake. Luckily when he heard the idea he really liked it. The Slumville Sunrise lyrics and meanings helped shape the locations, costume, feel and effects of the video.
Which scenes were shot with the Cinema Camera and which were with the Pocket? The Cinema Camera was used as the main camera with the two pocket cameras picking out details or different angles, to bring something a little different with the images they capture. The pocket was the one we could literally throw anywhere and we even sellotaped it to a motorised wheelchair. We were often restricted by small spaces and lots of action, so the pockets came in mega handy, although we did need some very wide glass to get round the small sensor size. The 16-mm sensors gave a documentary look to the project, which matched Jake’s costume and the low-key locations, furthering the organic feeling of the video as a whole. At the same time the pocket cameras were of a quality that could stand up to the micro four-thirds sensor of the Cinema Camera.
Why did you choose these cameras? They’re all small, light, very accessible to users – it meant we could be very quick and ad hoc during the shoot, which is great when the time scale is so tight. This also complemented the fun nature of the shoot as we could chop and change, or grab anything interesting as we went along without worrying about long setups. We shot a lot of the backgrounds separately from the main body of the shoot. We did a lot of it just by shooting the two Pocket cameras and Cinema Camera out of the windows of a car. The sensitivity and latitude of the cameras allowed us to largely shoot with only incidental lighting, or daylight, making them incredibly versatile on location. In the studio, the camera can of course be treated as any professional camera and adapted to the various environments. The cameras have great adaptability, latitude and quality – at times too good for this video so we actually pulled down some of the quality of the images to give to look we wanted.
Staff Reporter
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