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Our bid to conquer MTV

We have made a pop video. I am very excited about this.

I should qualify that. We’ve made videos before - or rather other people have made them for us. Six of them, in fact, although we’re only actually IN one of them. But this one, unlike the others, involved lip-synching, shiny costumes, props, even a plot of sorts, thanks to the efforts of our friends in the theatre company Highway Diner. What it will end up looking like I have no idea. We’ll find out in a couple of months when Daniel Warren, the director, finishes editing all the footage. He might decide that none of the lip-synching, shiny-costumed, prop-using stuff really worked out and that he’d rather make an art film consisting of a single close-up of a wall. In which case, fair enough. But it certainly FELT like we were making a pop video. Since you asked, it’s for our song The Balance Company, which will be released as a single early in the new year, in some format or other.

Generally I am hugely disappointed by pop videos. I know they are technically just adverts for a song, but I always hope for more than they deliver - some attempt at art, ideally. If they were all directed by Chris Cunningham, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Hammer & Tongs, Tim Pope or Derek Jarman (who, like Elvis, is really still alive), then that would be all well and good. Instead they are mostly directed by fools, who think it’s enough to jiggle a camera around furiously while hairy young people jump up and down and pretend to play guitar.

I am not promising ours will be up there with Bjork’s It’s Oh So Quiet, say, or that Coldplay video where Chris Martin had to spend days learning to mime the entire song backwards (although Daniel is a very talented man - you can watch some of his work here), but hopefully it’ll avoid some of the usual dreaded cliches. We set ourselves several rules.

1. No instruments. I am not spending an entire day pretending to play a keyboard unless someone is paying me a LOT of money.

2. No beautiful women who have clearly been paid to look adoringly at us (or even our more beautiful friends, bribed to look adoringly at us). Our video is likely to include Laura leaning on my shoulder with her face covered in blood, having just died in a car crash. Which should be, er, interesting.

3. No ludicrously literal visual accompaniments to lyrics. Like, I don’t know, it’s called The Balance Company so let’s have some people balancing on something precarious, while wearing suits, since the director clearly hasn’t got a fucking clue what the song is actually about, and neither have the band. (I make an exception for Erasure’s A Little Respect video, which takes the mickey out of this by doing it constantly - the line ‘soul I hear you calling’ being accompanied by an Olympic athlete with a torch; the Olympics were in Seoul that year).

4. No yachts.

5. No pathetic rock star sunglasses. And yes, I know I broke this cardinal rule for our PR shots. Still regretting that. What can I say? It was a really bright day, the photographer was making us stand facing right into the sun. I thought my retinas were going to burn off.

6. No attempts to look cooler than we are, which invariably backfire anyway (see 5, above). At the video shoot I ended up lip-synching while wearing the same scraggy jumper I turned up in. I may regret this. Hamish wore much the same so at least I am not alone. I kept having to remind him to tuck his shirt in. I have been telling myself that, artistically, this is the point of the video. Hamish and I are the near-invisible guardian angels of the song, watching over Highway Diner. You shouldn’t be looking at us, you should be looking at them. They’re better looking than us anyway.

7. No attempts at ‘acting’. At least not by us. People in bands should never attempt to act. Unless they’re David Bowie, who being David Bowie is allowed to do anything he likes (and wasn’t he great in The Prestige?)

Anyway, it’ll be finished by January, and on heavy rotation on MTV shortly afterwards. In theory.

Andrew

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  1. I would love to see you and Hamish do a pastiche of “Sapphire and Steel”,complete with the bit where your eyes glow blue.I think you would look fetching in a blonde wig and bright blue frock,Andrew.
    Seriously though,you’re right about Derek Jarman-he works in a garden centre near East Calder.

    Posted by Logan 5 on 11/23 at 10:03 PM

  2. If it weren’t for the fact that it’s 11:33pm I’d be in hysterics. However, looking forward to watching MTV for months on end! (If it’s any good.)

    Posted by Katherine on 11/24 at 03:34 AM
    3. Page 1 of 1 pages

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