Promo shoot, shot...

I spent the whole of today with the rest of Jeanie in the Radiator in a freezing cold, abandoned Colgate factory in Salford to shoot our promo video.  It went a lot more smoothly than expected.  I got my friend Paul Allen down to do the sound for the live acoustic performance we did.  He brought along his rig and assortment of Neumann, AKG and SE condenser mics and we were able to get a really nice sound.  The natural reverb of the huge space of the room really helped achieve great results as far as the audio went, and the director Mike had called in favours from workmates at the BBC so we had experienced camera men working to get the visual side of things looking sweet too.

We performed 3-4 takes of each of our own three songs (In Heaven, Bipolar and Building 30 apt. 10) as well as a cover of 'Katy on a Mission' by Katy B which we had previously performed at our acoustic gig in Altrincham.  Once we had enough footage we did our interview with Anthony Crank, who had prepared some questions, on a set Mike had designed using some rented furniture which looked really good.  The interview went pretty smoothly, certainly we had given Mike enough to use and so after around 30 minutes, ensuring we had put the relevant information across, we called a wrap!

It was a great experience doing the music video.  I've wanted to do something like this for a long time and it was quite an achievement to have co-organised it from scratch and pulled it off.  It was also a perfect way to make more contacts in the television, audio and radio industries (Anthony Crank having recently been hosting a BBC Radio Manchester show).  I can't wait to see the final results; I'm going to Paul's home studio to sort the audio out next Friday and once we have that to Mike to edit, it shouldn't be long before it is done!

©2010 Chris Lane

©2010 Chris Lane

Gigs today, Vids tomorrow...

We (Jeanie in the Radiator) played our first, full setup gig on Saturday - it went really well and made all the stress of the build up to it completely worth it.  It was the Forever Manchester Music Festival, we had a 7pm slot on the main stage in the middle of the Printworks Pumpyard which turned out to be a great time as it was late enough for the surrounding bars to have started filling up, but early enough that the building wasn't yet full of drunken hecklers (they turned up at around 9pm).

We managed to pull in a crowd of around 100 people and there were photographers from NME and Q magazine taking photos.  There was also a film crew who took some video footage, though I couldn't find them again after the gig to ask what they were filming for.  Either way it was a great gig and we got an offer to play another gig off the back of it as well as a record company A&R guy asking for our name.  I would have liked to have stayed around the gig for a bit longer to network more but, as always, there was equipment to shift into cars and take home - I'll try and delegate this job to someone else in future!

I met with our friend Michael who will be directing a promo video for us which will be shooting this coming Saturday, 27th.  I have contacted a friend who I recorded with a few years ago who now does on-site live recordings using a portable rig and he has agreed to record a live performance for us.  The plan is to film an acoustic performance of three of our songs as well as have an interview situation to introduce the band to our audience.  Our singer, Hollie-Jay managed to get her friend Anthony Crank involved to be the presenter which is great as he has worked on MTV as a host and now has a show on BBC Radio Manchester.  I'm hoping that the finished product will look really sleek and professional.  We have called in a lot of favours for this one so I am very much looking forward to seeing how it will turn out!

I'm happy that I'm keeping lots of things going: gigs, recording, videos.  Hopefully this will help extend my contacts in to the media side of things.  The majority of the crew who will be helping out at the shoot on Saturday work at the BBC so it will be another great opportunity for networking.  Onward and upward!

©2010 Steve Campbell