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FAE Film
Category: FILM
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Natalie McCool – ‘Devils’
Filmed in Vessel Studios in Liverpool, the video for ‘Devils’ was shot using a pared-back colour palette of red, white and black. The song emphasises the duality of dark vs light, and the swathes of red light allude to danger, seduction and the nature of Satan (a fallen angel) him/herself.
I used strong directional lighting, handheld camerawork and rapid cuts between the different colour setups to capture the raw energy of the track, which Natalie opted to perform whilst wielding her iconic white Fret-King Elise guitar.
| Director / Cinematographer / Editor | dur. 4m 04s |
‘Take Me To Your Leader’, the lead track from Natalie McCool’s latest album Memory Girl was filmed at Vessel Studios in Liverpool, utilising their infinity wall.
The song is about overcoming imposter syndrome, so we used many setups that explored the idea of mirroring and symmetry, including a stand-in double on-set with Natalie for the shots that showed her directly interacting with her ‘mirror’ self.
| Director / Cinematographer / Editor | dur. 3m 19s |
Positive Vibration began as a DJ and live music event hosted at the Kazimier and Kazimier Garden in Liverpool. This annual reggae appreciation meet-up soon evolved into a fully-fledged festival hosted in the Baltic Triangle, with the inaugural one scooping up the UK’s Best New Festival Award in 2016 and developing a cult following.
I oversaw the design and branding of PV from Vol. 2 onwards, utilising incredible artwork by Taj Francis in several poster designs as well as my own artwork for beer labels, tickets, infographics and on-site decals. I also shot and edited a promotional video made up of footage from the original award-winning Festival in 2016.
| logos, print media, infographics, video |
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Thom Morecroft – ‘The Beast’ LIVE
An uninterrupted single-take video of musician Thom Morecroft’s powerful performance of ‘The Beast’ at Studio 2, Liverpool on December 5th 2019.
| CAMERA | 5M 20S |
I first encountered Bring The Fire Project in 2013 after their performance lit up Threshold Festival. As Liverpool’s first and finest flow/fire-arts collective, they appear regularly at key events and festivals across the city, many of which I have documented for them.
As well as making videos, I designed their logo, which is usually displayed very prominently against the black hoodies they often wear at the events when not dressed in costume. The symmetrical design shows two hooded figures cradling a burst of flame, with magenta used as a feature colour for the word FIRE and the flame itself.
| photos, logos, poster, videos |
Lyric music video for The Charlatans’ release ‘Over Again’ off their album Different Days. The video adapted their existing brand identity and subverted it slightly, adding film grain and light leaks that softly react to the colours of the lyrics as they appear.
| motion graphics / editor | dur. 4m 01s |
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Hope Street Ltd
Based in Liverpool, Hope Street Ltd. was an organisation dedicated to the development of artists, artforms and arts in the community.
I designed printed material for Hope Street Ltd, On The Verge Festival and their Emerging Artists Programme, as well as documenting that year’s apprentices and producing a promotional video to showcase all that they had achieved.
| printed media, photos, video |
As the designer for Rebel Soul, I was responsible for the branding and visual identity for three successive ‘Voodoo Ball’ events from 2014-2016. Each event had a highly distinctive motif, complete with costumes, acts and on-location theming, to make the ‘Alternative Halloween’ Ball one of Liverpool’s most iconic nights out.
2014’s event had a Mexican-inspired ‘Day of the Dead’ theme, utilising heart, skull and flower imagery and the deathly visage of La Catrina.
2015 explored the Latin American legend of El Coco (the ‘bogeyman’) with a poster designed to emulate horror and B-movie artwork from the 1950s.
2016’s ball depicted a dystopian 1980s Afrofuturist saga set between three factions – the Afropunks, the Afrolords, and the mysterious Afronauts.
As well as the poster designs themselves, I was highly involved in the events’ overall look and theming, from the icons used for 2016’s factions to teaser gifs, and artwork for accompanying events (such as the Wake the Dead Parade and Day of the Dead family event).
I also produced promo videos for both the 2015 and 2016 events.
| posters and assorted media, video |
Lyric music video created for Tim Burgess and the O Genesis label for the first track of his album ‘Same Language, Different Worlds’ with Peter Gordon.
An homage to two cultures, the video has both Japanese and English lyrics in a reverse scroll down the screen, along with stylised tetris piece outlines falling in the background and a blocky waveform pattern reacting to the audio input.
Clips from the video were broadcast live on Channel 4 during the show Sunday Brunch in September 2016.
| motion graphics / editor | dur. 3m 51s |
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Le Mans 2016
I was fortunate enough to attend the 84th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2016 – a marathon endurance race for prototype and GT cars run once a year at Circuit de la Sarthe in France.
A long-held childhood dream of mine was to stay up for the full duration of the race; after visiting for the first time in 1993 as a 6-year-old, where I was blown away by the electricity and excitement of a full-blooded race through the night, I was finally able to realise this ambition, 23 years later. This is what I saw.
| photos | Camera / Editor | 1m 40s |
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Threshold 2015 Video
I filmed the fifth Threshold Festival of Music & Arts on 27-29 March 2015, and later put together a montage video by pooling footage with other videographers who had captured the event.
The retrospective was used as promo ahead of the sixth Threshold in 2016.
| Camera Op / Editor | 3m 59s |
My first ever lyric video, ‘Cardiac Arrest’, emulates the dizzying, headrush feeling of being in love by treating the lyrics as a twisting maze through a stylized bloodstream. There are multiple nods and references to the cardio-based wordplay Natalie McCool weaves throughout the track.
| motion graphics / Editor | dur. m2m 48s |
As part of my role as director of the Liverpool-based events company Rebel Soul, I designed a number of gig posters as well as overseeing the company’s overall branding & merchandise ‘look’ and the occasional video.
The logo itself was derived from a piece of artwork by our good friend, sound wizard and musician Adam Hanley, framed inside a reuleaux triangle similar in shape to a plectrum. The bespoke wordmark is fluid and flowing, evoking the rounded fonts commonly used in vinyl and record culture.
Each event we put on had a very distinct vibe, ranging from the acoustic sanctum of a Scandinavian seafarers church, to an open-air carnival of all things Jamaican. Several of the events became distinct entities in their own right – Positive Vibration and The Voodoo Ball for example.
| seasonal logos & event posters |
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Natalie McCool – ‘Pins’
My fourth collaboration with Liverpool & London-based Natalie McCool for ‘Pins’, a moody, electronic track that continues the development of her new sound first heard in ‘Dig It Out’.
Filmed in the white box at WARPLiverpool, the video is sterile and minimalistic, focusing primarily on Natalie’s performance using a pivoting viewpoint from a fixed position. Special effects were added in post to overlay different takes, as well as abstract shots of a temporary yellow & black tape installation created in the space by production designer Laura Lomax.
| Director / Cinematographer / Editor | dur. 3m 59s |
From the fifth Threshold Festival onwards, I oversaw the creation of a new aesthetic every year bar one until the tenth and final edition in 2021, designing logos, posters, merchandise, artwork and more.
The 2015 event used the theme ‘Contrasting Geometries’ which was embraced at every level, from designing a bespoke typeface, to geometry-inspired ‘Threshyheads’ (above) and even the decision to use the roman numeral V instead of 5.
| logos, print media, posters, promo |
Shot at Liverpool speakeasy Berry and Rye, this stylish music video for singer-songwriter Helena Johnson tells the story of a couple reminiscing about the night they first met.
| director / cinematographer / editor | dur. 3m 24s |
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Natalie McCool – ‘Dig It Out’
My third collaboration with singer-songwriter Natalie McCool for the infectious track ‘Dig It Out’.
Filmed over several nights at WARPLiverpool, a large post-industrial warehouse in Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle, the video contrasts the dark, brooding emptiness of the space with stark lighting, projections and incredible fire poi stunts courtesy of Bring the Fire Project.
| Director / Cinematographer / Editor | dur. 3m 21s |
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Threshold 2014 Video
I filmed the fourth Threshold Festival of Music & Arts over 28-30 March 2014 and recorded the thoughts of the three festival directors on the final day.
This retrospective looks back at a very important year in the history of the event, as it sought to establish itself as an important platform for grassroots music, performance and visual art in the NW and beyond.
I shot the event alternating between two different cameras and opted to utilise a lot of slow motion footage in the edit.
| 2 x Camera Op / Sound Recordist / Editor | 3m 22s |
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Natalie McCool – ‘Wondrous Place’
My first music video collaboration with Natalie McCool, who had been asked by Q magazine editor and writer Paul Du Noyer to cover a song live for a panel he was hosting at 2013’s Threshold Festival. The song she picked was Billy Fury’s ‘Wondrous Place’, as she had received a grant from his memorial fund earlier in her career.
Her resulting version of the song is very different in tone to the original, unsettling and dark, so when it came to the shoot we found an abandoned site in the North West and crafted a narrative about a young woman visiting an unloved place with a ghostly past. Shot entirely in slow motion on a particularly overcast day, we managed to capture an eerie stillness that suited the song perfectly.
In April 2020, Natalie’s version of ‘Wondrous Place’ was used in the Sky TV trailer for ‘The Third Day’ – a psychological thriller set on a mysterious island – harnessing the track’s unnerving quality yet again.
| Director / Cinematographer / Editor | dur. 3m 26s |
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Threshold 2013 Video
I filmed the third annual Threshold Festival on Sat 9th & Sun 10th March 2013. The footage was edited into a montage looking back at the musicians, artists and performers who had delighted the crowds in Camp & Furnace and other venues around the Baltic Triangle. The retrospective was set to the backdrop of ‘Spinning Yarns’ by local band Book Thieves, which I had coincidentally filmed a performance of during the event.
| Camera Op / Editor | dur. 3m 04s |
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This Is England?
What if in ‘This Is England’ the counter-culture wasn’t punk, it was français.
Filmed in back-streets in central Liverpool, Clockwork Arts’ short was made specifically to be entered into FilmFour’s ‘Scene Stealers’ competition, and ended up making the top 30 shortlist.
Subverting the Northern Englishness of the original film, we decided all the characters should talk and act as over-the-top French stereotypes, whilst still sticking as close as possible to the script. Baguettes, boules and berets feature prominently.
| DIRECTOR / CINEMatographER / EDITOR | DUR. 2M 11S |
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‘Hunter Gatherer’
As part of the creative collective Clockwork Arts, I worked on the 2012 reed.co.uk short film entry ‘Hunter Gatherer’. The film was shot in and around Waterloo and Crosby, starring a pair of modern-day cavemen as they set out in search of their next meal.
In addition to filming and editing the short, I drew & animated the stick figures & provided an embarrassing amount of caveman noises in post-production.
| Cinematographer / Editor / Animator | dur. 2m 19s |
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‘Lamb’
