Nick: The other three EPinaday songs have all had previous lives in bands that I’ve played them with. This track, whilst it’s been kicking around for a couple years, had never been performed live or even rehearsed by a band before. For that reason it feels like the most honest expression of the arrange-and-record-in-a-day concept.
In writing terms it’s pretty straight-up Nashville country in the Cash and Carter tradition. Boxing matches are a metaphor I seem to keep coming back to, probably because of all the great terminology that exists in the sport (plenty of my trademark apocalyptic imagery sneaks in too). Musically there’s a certain gleeful dumbness to the chunka-chunk chorus that we all leaned into. There’s a 7th chord in there among the usual major chords, which makes it practically jazz by my standards.
Luke: After the multi-cam extravaganza of World Of Hurt, and the demure black and white of Lake George, I was at a loss for how to approach Seeing Stars. Quick edits? Lots of inserts? More of the same?
Nick provided me with the key – he said (and I’m paraphrasing), “It’s a country song, innit? So go punk with it. Blank Generation. Them bleedin’ squares won’t know what hit ’em”. Blank Generation is a touchstone between us – 16mm unsynched black and white reels of bands playing CBGBs in the late 70s. It’s essentially home movies, some of bands that became the biggest in world – Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Ramones, and others that became cult favourites – Television, Wayne County, Tuff Darts, to name a few. Put simply, it’s the coolest footage ever filmed.
I didn’t go Blank Generation on Seeing Stars. But the suggestion freed me to not be so precious with the footage. I wanted to do something similar to this video of PROM, to recast it as a long-lost VHS nasty. With that as a starting point, I put together the ‘interrupted transmission’ intro, to indicate a clean break from the slicker videos that came before (the dubbed Spanish sitcom dialogue was a perverse piece of whimsy).
There is a veneer of TV static over the footage (though not as extreme as Nothing But Flowers), and then from there, things get… weird. The doubled footage, the squiggly black lines, and the day-glo colours were the result of a fun morning of experimentation (which also yielded hideous Rubber Johnnies like this):
To me, it’s come out quite psychedelic, and I like the idea of both Nick and Julia seemingly singing this duet not to each other, but to mirrored versions of themselves.
My favourite moment though is when Sam King’s head disappears – it’s like there’s an invisible lake in the middle of the frame – his topknot bobs above a moment before sinking completely. Beautiful.
NICK- Hey Guys, we thought we’d tag-team the post for this, the third of five videos from the EPINADAY.
I originally wrote Lake George to pitch to Luke’s country band The Bluffhearts. The chorus line- ‘it sure ain’t a good idea’ – just popped into my head with the melody attached, and it was one of those good lines that brings the whole narrative with it. I remember sitting down to write it in the leafy backyard of a sharehouse in Hackett, it took about 40 minutes. I went straight out and played it at a gig that night.
It was a bit too 3/4 for the Bluffhearts but it went on to be a bit of a showstopper for Big Score, the jam band I had going with a bunch of other singer-songwriter friends. We use to play a very rocky version with me strumming dumbly on the bass and drummer Nick Peddle going apeshit out of the bridge stop. Nick also plays on this version and it’s a testament to his versatility that he nails the sparse vibe every bit as well.
Obviously it’s the sort of Place Name song were the Place has very little to do with the narrative. That was very much on purpose, as I’d wanted to use an iconic ACT location without trying to say anything about Canberra. It’s a Song-As-Short-Story about dodgy guy meeting dodgy girl, when I wrote it it was pure fiction but in the intervening years I’ve probably skirted close to some of this behavior (though I still don’t drink OR drive).
I’d say it probably still stands up as one of the five best songs I’ve ever written and I love this version. Jules nailed the sing-along hook (which was originally sung by Big Score’s Beth Monzo) but for me it was particularly cool to have her on electric guitar instead of her usual acoustic. Matt resisted my advice to play a busier part, and as always he was right. Sam’s slide licks were played on a homemade guitar that his Dad made as a young man, hopefully we can find a still shot of it to post ’cause that thing is nuts.
LUKE – Lake George is one of my favourite Delatovic songs (I still remember the first time I heard it years ago at a Bluffhearts practice in Mel’s garage). That beautiful, weary line towards the end – “I’ll take off my spurs/And I’ll put on the bridle” – is as perfect and unique a metaphor as it gets. I remember the version Delatovic and Peddle used to play in Big Score as obstreperous, the individual segments coming together like parts from different songs. This take is more cohesive, slower, stately – Sunday morning rather than Saturday night. I needed the edit to reflect this.
Black and white images always seem at a remove. Some people think this remove is one of time, harkening back to the pre-colour era of film. I think the remove is not in time, but in reality – the world we live in is in colour – black and white is hence otherworldly (or just other). It’s a space that belongs to imagination, to movies, and to dreams. It’s set aside from real life, and larger than life in some cases. It can make the ordinary seem artful, and make the artful seem sublime.
All of which is unimportant to the casual observer, but as a filmmaker, it’s certainly an interesting place to start. The dissolves (don’t get me started on dissolves!) enhance the floating atmosphere, and complement the unhurried, hazy pace of the arrangement.
Taking footage from the same session and making four visually distinct videos is a challenge. World Of Hurt and Lake George have set the bar high – I watched Gimme Shelter this week for inspiration – maybe I need to superimpose a long flowing pink scarf onto Nick!
Huzzah! Check out Faux Faux Amis’ debut video for our slow-burner Holiday Inn. CAT FROM JAPAN have called it “a misty blues, injected with hints of Velvet Underground-esque New York vogue.” As a big Velvet Underground fan I’m thrilled with the comparison.
The video was shot in an afternoon in Brooklyn. Originally, I’d wanted to do a ‘serious’ video, starring myself. Some kind of Wong Kar-Wai montage of beautifully photographed night scenes – smeary lights reflecting off car bonnets in the rain, and the like. I wanted to be Tony Leung in Happy Together, basically. As you’ll see, that is not even close to what happened, but a few traces remained. Part of the reason we jettisoned that idea was we’d already shot the similarly structured White Roses. It felt like we would be repeating ourselves, replacing Queanbeyan with New York, and Tom Woodward with me.
The idea took on a life of its own when we discovered ‘Stan’. Friends had clued us in pre-trip that we could create our own muppet(!) at FAO Schwarz – the resultant moustachioed progeny seemed destined for the screen. Lou proved a natural puppeteer (though as a director, I was alarmed by Stan’s limited emotional range). Stan got a great reaction out in public – people smiled and waved, and at one point, a barber came out the front of his shop offering to cut his hair.
Even now when I close my eyes and imagine my original conception for this video, the strongest image is a glowing neon sign, its letters reading from top to bottom. The kind of thing that probably hasn’t existed in New York City since the 70s.
Shooting in daylight would not have captured it anyway. Still, I was intrigued with finding a way to interpolate the concept – that’s how I struck upon the scrolling, glowing text. In English, it would’ve looked like a word jumble; in Japanese, it looked natural, and its literal meaning was obfuscated enough to not distract (the individual sentences, each seven characters long, are like bad haiku lines, extraneous sentiments pertaining to the song (e.g. “with heavy heart abandon, I seek truth”). For better or worse, it’s not something I’ve seen used in a music video before.
Cross-dissolves, frequently used to show the passage of time, are on overload here, underlining the endless questing of the lyrics.
We recorded the song in Melbourne with Nick McCorriston, but the resultant version felt thin and too ‘rock’. Starting with the original stems, Paul Heslin and I remixed it, altering the arrangement and adding elements (Mel and Cath’s sultry backing vocals, Nick Combe’s killer saxophone). The result is bass-heavy and flecked with dubby touches – I think it’s now cool as fuck. Rewriting songs and/or continuing to tinker with elements post-recording is something I learnt to do in Cool Weapon. I would bring the guys a demo, and it would always bounce between us several times before the final iteration. Invisible was like that – it got built up and stripped back several times – the massive guitar solo began as the vocal line.
The first live incarnation of Holiday Inn was by my mega-talented friends Jasmine Sym and Geoff Wells, who performed it around Edinburgh after I had left. I don’t know if there is anything more satisfying for a songwriter than having others perform your song – it’s only happened a handful of times in my life – I still remember the first time, when Ben Stiel performed a song of mine at a Pot Belly open mic night.
The song prominently cribs two lines from Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight – my influence for using another’s lyrics as a jumping off point is The Beatles’ Come Together, where John rehashed some Chuck Berry lines to kickstart his muse. In this case, it contrasts the narrator’s nocturnal search for their partner with the seeming fun and frivolity going on around him – as if the Sugarhill Gang’s party-calls are bleeding into the song as the narrator passes a nightclub blaring the tune. The rest of the song is based on an actual night in Cairns where I did wake up in the back of my car in the centre of town, and stumbled out in search of Lou. Though my ensemble wasn’t nearly as dapper as Stan’s…
Behold, the video for Slow Turismo’s scarily good Breathe. Again I wrote, directed and edited (Lou and I produced).
My initial pitch was to tar and feather the band, ending with them playing the song. However, they were adamant they didn’t want to appear in the clip, no matter the idea. When they arrived on set, and saw what we subjected Brendan to, they were pretty happy with their decision. I’d still love to feature them in a clip though – maybe next time.
This marks the third part of my psychosexual trilogy, beginning with Cracked Actor’s Lemon On Your Lover, and continuing into PROM’s Half In Shadow, Half In Light (for a couple of happy-go-lucky guys, Nick and I have some odd predilections). The dancers are dressed in highly stylized crow costumes (again, ably provided by Julia Johnson). They could probably also find work as cat burglars, Irma Vep-style. For me, the idea of a couple of birds attempting to turn someone else into a bird had a perverse appeal. There’s also the subtext of two women torturing a man – a hazing essentially, where he’s tied up, stripped, beaten, and rubbed down, in order to conform to the cult. There’s no explanation provided, for either the literal action or the symbolism – we begin in media res – a conscious decision to stimulate questions from the audience, and allow them to fill in the gaps.
I love trying something new every time I shoot – in this case, it was a remote location, and working with dancers.
The remote location is actually only ten minutes from my house – a section of Kowen Forest accessible by Sutton Road. Still, with no onsite power or facilities, Lou and I had to be thorough in bringing along every conceivable thing we would need (it took two cars). A few weeks prior, I spent a really fun morning scouting locations. I took my camera and stopped at half a dozen places, looking for somewhere suitably ominous… that was also accessible. The highlight, beyond discovering the perfect spot, was finding an unidentified animal skull (we used it in a sequence that didn’t make the final cut). Our location, as you can see, was gorgeous – I loved the ghostly grey of the spindly trees, and the dense covering of orange pine needles. The earthy tones contrasted perfectly with the blacks and whites I had in mind for the costumes.
The two dancers/avian spectres are Jessica Pearce and Alison Plevey. I met Alison through You Are Here – we both competed in the Artist Olympics. I was bowled-over by her (as many were) in the solo tour-de-force Johnny Castellano Is Mine. From then on, I was looking for an opportunity to work together (I pitched the band four ideas for the video, two of which I wrote with Alison in mind). Alison choreographed the performance and enlisted Jessica to join her – they played the role to perfection, alternating between mischievous and sensual, otherworldly and vicious.
Our beleaguered protagonist, Brendan Kelly, is one of the leads from my sitcom pilot The Real. He’s such a relaxed presence on film, and I knew he could easily portray the vulnerability required. My only worry was that the role is confronting – not every actor is happy to re-enact archaic forms of punishment on screen. However, after reading the concept document, he accepted without hesitation – I met with him a few weeks beforehand to make doubly clear we were going to strip him and cover him in “tar” – dude didn’t even blink. I’ve seen the video at least a hundred times, but watching it again just then, I’m still blown away by his performance.
This was one of the most stressful shoots we’ve yet to pull together. I kept an eye on the forecast for the weeks before the date, but the night beforehand, I had to concede to Mother Nature and cancel the shoot – the Bureau Of Meteorology was predicting a 90% chance of a thunderstorm. Lou and I ended up taking a day off work the following week to film – our only chance to capture it before we would have had to re-cast or abandon the concept (the band were tied into a promotional schedule which afforded little wriggle room). It was only through the generous flexibility of our performers that we were able to proceed. On the day, it didn’t rain… but it was bitterly, bitterly cold. We tried our best to keep the cast warm with hot water bottles, blankets, and thermos’ of coffee, but there was no avoiding the chilly conditions. Again, to their credit, our tenacious talent never once complained. I remain incredibly impressed with all of them.
Another ‘first’ was adding an overlay of film grain to the footage. This gave it a smoother, cinematic feel – more Evil Dead than The Blair Witch Project (I don’t know if there’s a way to film in a forest and not automatically tap into some horror tropes). My dad had built a DSLR stabilizing rig out of PVC piping when I first got my camera; this was the first time I’ve made extensive use of it (thanks Dad, and umm, sorry it took so long). I used it to get all of the voyeuristic shots, peeking around trees and through branches. Horror is not a genre I’m particularly familiar with – my naiveté probably made it easier to just hook in.
As popular culture becomes increasingly fractured, the audiences for arthouse and mainstream cinema less frequently mix. The exception remains music videos – while many people aren’t interested in arthouse cinema, they’re happy to sit through something completely fantastical and outré if a song plays underneath (or if Scarlet Johnansson is in it). As an artform, music videos often obey the rules of music more than video, in that mood and texture can be more important than structure or narrative. In the same way you can’t ‘explain’ a saxophone solo, music videos are allowed to follow their own logic, so long as the spell is not broken. I don’t have much interest in the short film format, but I could happily make music videos forever.
The second of five EPinaday vids is up, and instead of a song this one is a short interview piece, also captured on that one day, that explains the whole enterprise.
The song featured is World Of Hurt, which you’ve already seen performed in it’s entirety as the first video. This is a song that I’ve been playing with PROM since that band’s first gig, so Julia was already well-versed with it. That said, it was completely re-jigged over the course of the day, changing both key and genre and morphing from a chord-based chugger into a latticework of nimble riffs.
I wrote the song in the wake of a particularly intense one-night-stand experience a few years back, one where the friendship was protected by me pretending that I hadn’t fallen hard for the other person. I wrote the song as a ‘what- if’ story, what kind of disaster might have happened if I’d let the person know how I was feeling. As is my want, I leaned hard on the melodrama and the apocalyptic imagery.
I’d always thought of it as my Springsteen song (or at worst my Hold Steady song) but the version we’ve recorded reminds me more of one of my favourite bands, Memphis-based post-soulsters Reigning Sound. The live-in-studio approach really seems to have been a perfect approach for this track.
Last night, Tim Duck, Lou and I sat down and listened to the finalised sound mix for The Real. It was a momentous occasion, one of the final stages of post-production. As we near completion, I’m really trying to savour these moments.
By my standards, it has taken forever. In the same time period, I’ve also shot five music videos, participated in the You Are Here festival, set up a whole new band that’s signed to a record label and has 19 original songs (and is on to our third drummer…), and travelled to Peru/Argentina/Chile/Brazil/Iceland/Netherlands/USA. I like to work quickly, and move from one thing straight to the next – in addition to all of the technical and management skills The Real has taught me, it’s also teaching me patience.
Photos by Louise McGrath
And this is just the first stage – once the pilot is complete, the more challenging next phase is to present it to industry. But right now, after hearing what Tim and his class have done, I’m going to be on a high all week.
I turn down most offers to film live music, but when Nick asked and explained the concept, I had to say ‘yes’. When he told me he had also brought Shane Parsons on board I suggested we go all out and get as many cameras as we could. We wrangled a couple of extras (with Sam King’s gracious assistance), and were good to go.
On the day, filming was surprisingly straightforward. Adam Thomas was brought in as photographer, but ended up doing double duty, manning our static cameras. Shane is an Energiser Bunny when it comes to filming, constantly on the move, picking up shots from any angle he can find. I prefer to concentrate on focus shifts and steady panning shots, letting the edit provide the momentum. Between the two of us, we get the best of both worlds.
The split-screen effects and widescreen aspect ratio make the edit for me – it was a chance to use more of the footage, and to present it in a cinematic context. Nick and I are discussing other approaches for the remaining videos, but for this initial foray I tried to leave the footage as close to how it looked in the room, to preserve the intimacy we had on the day.
Thankfully, the release schedule isn’t Heartbroken Assassin pace – we’ll be releasing a video every week or so from now.
Hey Guys, Nick here with anther absurd logistical pressure cooker disguised as an art project!
Sam King is the best record producer in the ACT and I’ve made him do some pretty cockamamie things over the years. This one might have taken the cake- putting a band together for one 14-hour day, in which 4 songs of mine were learned from scratch, arranged, and then recorded while also being filmed as a ‘live-in-studio’ performance vid.
I always like to be the weakest link in any project I put together. This whole thing was a cheap tactic to get to put together the most bullshit-awesome backing band I possibly could to cut versions of some of my more Americana-ish songs. As well as Mr King himself on guitar and and slide, my Murderers Row included Julia ‘and the Deep Sea Sirens’ Johnson on vocals and ‘lectric, Nick Peddle (Fun Machine, Pocket Fox) on drums and Matt Lustri (Spartak and Los Chavos and well as playing with me in Cracked Actor and Prom).
Our ‘studio’ location fell into our lap in somewhat comical fashion. The gym where I work, Elements Fitness, used to be an RSL-style venue. Bizarrely, the original stage has been walled off from the rest of the building and remains intact, leaving a room with little functional purpose aside from providing an acoustically-sound room with an endearingly odd feel for EP-in-a-day projects.
Some of the guys had played a couple of the songs in other bands with me so I thought we might run ahead of schedule. Ha! My naive dream of an 8-hour day disappeared on the breeze as each song was tipped, flipped or turned completely upside down by the rogues gallery. The guys exceeded my hopes in terms of their engagement and the efficient way they explored creative side alleys.
After 10 hours of woodshedding, it was time to roll tape (read: laptop) and turn on for the cameras. The film crew was every bit as over-powered as the band: Luke ‘Another Fine Mess’ McGrath, Shane ‘Nick Wants To Do What?’ Parsons and Adam ‘What Would You All Do Without Me’ Thomas (who is also responsible for these fine still photos). The cameras were extremely patient with a shoot that involved even more hurry-up-and-waiting than the usual film set. Thanks also to Leon Twardy for his exemplary engineering assistance.
I’m blissfully happy with the rough mixes of the audio and will post them soon. The whole thing is a big experiment in Instant Musical Gratification and we’ll see how it scrubs as a video thing, but in the meantime I’m sold on the format as a fun and rewarding way to record.
Tom first played me the song on his balcony overlooking the Queanbeyan river. He had some ideas, including shooting at the nearby suspension bridge. I had a long-incubating ambition to showcase Queanbeyan on film, so I suggested we expand our focus.
Queanbeyan is a brilliant place for filming, and unique in the area. For example, unlike Quangers, Canberra has no traditional Australian pubs, a result of prohibition in the ACT until 1928 (Queanbeyan has, ahem, four). Nowhere around has as much character, and certainly not as many old-school, iconic motel signs (I showed extreme restraint only including one). It was the perfect sleepy town for filming a wistful country song.
Having grown up in Struggletown, I wanted to capture some personally significant places, like the Crawford Centre (where Dad and I would have coffee and cheese toasties), and the Karabar Shopping Mall (the bleak grey cube which housed the payphone I’d call privately from in the pre-mobile era). Ironically, the place that got me thinking I should document Q-town – the dilapidated but still running Chinese takeaway across from my house – fell off our shooting schedule. I’ll find a way to work it into something soon.
Tom and I began shooting at 6am on Easter Monday. As the sun dawned, we had the main street to ourselves. We moved quickly and covered a range of locations, capitalising on the early morning light. Our last location was the suspension bridge – I hadn’t realised how difficult it might be to shoot on it (it wasn’t Sorcerer-bad, but it bounced with every step), and we were surprised by the volume of foot traffic. Still, it became the centrepiece of the video.
Rather than trying to make the stop-motion footage smooth, I gave it a measured, photo-like feel. Tom said he tried not to blink, but I kept in the takes where he did – your mind thinks it’s a photo, making each blink surreal.
The bridge was also the site of a bloody murder a few years ago. While it’s not referenced in the clip, it adds weight to the violence and resignation within the lyrics.
While the lyrics are poignant, the music itself is upbeat. The video had to encapsulate both sides. Tom and I acknowledged it would be easy for the clip to become too earnest. The latter half of our day was spent filming in the studio. His delivery to camera, and his dancing, gives an energy that spares it from being morose. He’s a natural performer and his rakish charm shines through. The contrast between the two sets of footage makes the clip for me.
Perhaps it’s the timeless nature of Tom’s songs, but several of his previous film clips are also in black and white. We had shot in colour (to capture the ‘magic hour’ hues that time of morning), but when editing, I soon switched to black and white. Black and white is amazing in its versatility – it can make footage seem gritty, or in this case, dream-like.
Working with Tom was a joy and I imagine we will do more in the future.
Like Joan Didion, I write to know what I think. In that sense, this blog is an education. I also keep it to hold myself accountable, ensuring I stay busy enough to have things to post.
Hence it’s frustrating when I feel like I’m working but have little to show. I’m sitting on a couple of larger posts I can share shortly, but in the meantime here’s a snapshot of where I’m at.
I am presently writing the second issue of my ‘comic project’ (I need to have codenames for these yet-to-be-announced things). The second issue will complete the initial story arc and then I will be confident to start engaging artists.
I finished editing The Real about a month ago – like a first-time father, I reluctantly handed it to our sound mixer Tim Duck for him to work his magic. A few final touches (grading, titles) remain, but the plan is to complete it by June. And then from there… who knows? It’s sickeningly exciting.
When asked what makes a writer, Warren Ellis simply said, “someone that wakes up and writes every day”. His words were ringing in my ears over the couple of months since I’ve picked up a camera. I’ve been itching to get back in the game. Tom Woodward is an old friend (we’d share stages ten years ago) who has moved back to town – specifically, around the corner from my house. Drinking merlot on his balcony, we hashed out a film clip idea for a song he just recorded. It won’t be released until June but he’s graciously cleared me to share these frames.
I shot and edited the clip this week – I’ll write more about the concept and its execution when it’s officially released. I’ve also taken a couple of meetings with a Canberra band about directing their debut clip – the idea I’ve pitched them is on another level again, and promises to be our best yet.
Faux Faux Amis have some big news I’ve been sitting on, but can share soon. This at least does have a code name – ‘FFA X’.
And finally, it was my pleasure to film Beth n Ben performing their live debut album last night. It’s an odd but welcome change to film something and not have to edit it. I was trying to imagine the edit in my mind (there were five camera operators including myself, plus GoPros and other gear dotted around the venue), and by sheer volume of choice, it’s going to be a challenge.
In three hours now, I board a plane for Amsterdam – see you when I get back!
Lick Nuke 