You might know him from his excellent camera reviews, but Philip Bloom also has a large body of work online that consists of music videos, documentaries, and narratives. For his most recent project, Philip has joined forces with one of his frequent collaborators, Olly Knights, to shoot a music video for the main single off Olly's new album Bitten By the Frost. The piece was shot in two days on the Canon 1D C DSLR, and a few great behind the scenes videos have been posted online in addition to the music video. Check out all of them below.
Here was Philip's idea behind the video:
Playing on the mundanity of everyday life that song plays on I wanted the video to show this. My idea that his life is so mundane that we are literally passengers in it and we drift through day with little changing until the whole thing just becomes an endless cycle.
To show this I wanted Olly to stay in the frame in the same position in every single shot. Only the background would change and I needed his performance to be quietly intense but without too much expression as we are going for a mundane life type feel. I also needed real everyday things for hi to drift through. Bed, breakfast, tube, work etc. But with a twist being that things go a little differently on one day…
With Olly being in each frame the sense I wanted to feel like life was passing him by without even noticing it and especially without moving! He would sing the song and as he does it his we run through his whole week . To emphasise this the edits wouldn’t be on line breaks but during words at times creating a really fluid feel as we run through the 7 days.
Here are the terrific behind the scenes videos:
If you look at the way the crew had to move and some of the shots they needed to steal, the 1D C is certainly a logical choice based on the image quality. Philip wanted some room to crop if he needed it, so that's part of the reason for choosing to shoot 4K -- and if you're looking for a small and compact 4K camera that shoots to CF cards -- the 1D C is pretty much your only option.
Since it was a low-budget music video, Philip acted as most of the main roles, which is quite difficult when you consider the number of shots they were doing per day. It's always great to have separate people operating in different positions, but sometimes it's just impossible to have more crew members and you have to make do with what you have. It's great to see how much organization was involved to pull off the production, and for anyone who is going to attempt their own low-budget music video, head on over to Philip's website for an in-depth post about his process and the pre-production involved with the shoot.
You can find a link to the song and album below.
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