Into The Valley

I have just completed a new film about my old punk band The Skids all shot on 5Ds and 7Ds.

The event was a week long celebration of the different aspects of my work in my home county Fife in the East of Scotland.

The gig was the finale to a week of cinema workshops and talks including an on stage interview conducted by the crime novelist Ian Rankin about my life and work.

As a team we didn’t have long to plan how to shoot the various events. We kind of just arrived in Scotland and made it up as we went along.

This is not how I normally work and being more of a control freak made this improvised approach a bit of a worry.

We had three 5D MkIIs and a 7D with a variety of prime lenses as well as Zacuto rigs and follow focus.

Live gigs in the music industry are one of the only ways of making money, they want to record the gigs and can’t afford big productions but still want cool and effective images that capture the live vibe.

The second night was all about the occasion. A large sold out venue with an enthusiastic crowd meant that we needed to turn the cameras the other way. The great thing was that the audience thought of them as stills cameras so paid little attention to them being pointed in their face.

In the edit we used the multi-take option in Final Cut Pro to look through the footage simultaneously and we were constantly amazed at how we never saw the other cameras at any point. It was a real breakthrough.

How many times have you watched your favourite band on TV at an event like Glastonbury and been disappointed to see camera teams all over the stage? This doesn’t happen using HDSLRs, you just don’t see them.

The whole experience was invigorating, a new way of working and another feather in the cap of convergence.

It’s now a style I’ll take into my next movie project: HELTER SKELTER. Mulit-cam shooting, various angles covered with small discreet cameras using wonderful glass on the front.

I can’t quite put into words how this changes the game for me. I’ve been working with small budgets on all my movies but always tried to create something visually arresting - now I can really do it for even smaller sums of money and most importantly retain control.