In September I was approached by the band Some Time Today about making their music video for their single Another Way. The song is about the bombed out church in Liverpool, Church of St Luke. There were talks of the church being turned into a hotel and basically ruining the unique look of the church. Tom Ashcroft, the lead singer wrote about how there must be another way to preserve the ageing building; explaining his displeasure as the iconic place being seen as a money making exercise. Through conversations with Tom and the band they said how the bombed out church has been a place for people to chill out and relax, musicians to perform and even weddings.
As a photographer I LOVE stories, and this one got me straight away. We started to plan exactly what we’d do, first trying to get permission to shoot the music video in the bombed out church itself. This basically wasn’t going to happen as they were renovating parts of it as it had become unsafe in parts. So then thought about where else we could shoot the video. At first, we thought of just doing it in a church but this seemed to lack the impact of the lyrics. Then Toby, the drummer reminded me of St Catherine’s Chapel in Lydiate which is a ruin of a chapel built in 1500! We both knew of this place as my friend proposed to his now wife there as she would go visit there from time to time and Toby also proposed to his fiancee there too. The band had decided to do a performance music video inside the ruin!
The ruin made perfect sense, now we just need to get permission to shoot there… which we did, we just had to make sure we didn’t move any of the stones or dig there. Easy! Oh and you need public liability insurance for £10m. Yep, ten million. Done. Now lastly we just need a generator on site. Done. Two cars full of gear and we arrive bright and early and there’s morning dew making it… interesting where we can and can’t put equipment. Apparently amps don’t like moisture, who knew?! As we set up the first scene inside the ruin with the full band the dew evaporates and the day looks like a good’n!
We started by shooting the opening sequence where Mike is on the wall with the band behind him as the camera moves in closer. This was done with a dolly off Amazon and wooden planks. Nothing fancy, but looks cool, right? As you might have worked out by now, the reason for the generator was so the band could play the song so they could mime along to it. But how did they hear it over Toby’s drums? You may ask. Well you can get dampeners for them and apparently putting gaffer tap underneath cymbals works. We then recorded the performance from inside the ruin, doing a main camera shot head on and then two where I roamed around with the camera as they performed. I then shot the drummer, Toby using the dolly going from side to side this time. I wanted to get a slow motion shot with the DSLR but then thought I’d try my iPhone… I ended up preferring the iPhone shot! So that’s what you see at 2 minutes 6 seconds!
We then moved to outside the church ruin and shoot each artist in turn playing through the song leaving Toby till last. I purposely left Toby till last as his had the biggest setup and as we were going to set up the whole band as the last shot on this side of the Abbey. We then moved to the back part of the ruin to shoot Mike’s acoustic part again with the dolly setup. The things you learn! I actually learnt a load on this video shoot! I love the band, they’re babes! Go check out the music video: