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Skin On Skin video shoot Blog Timeline: Friday the 9th of November and it's the day of the 'Skin on Skin' video shoot. This is to be the second video off the album 'What's in your head?' the first was 'This planet and me' which was a live video and was shot and edited by Banned TV productions.. Banned TV were also at the helm for this shoot... It was to be an early start for the shoot around 9-am and was to run the whole day... It was a chilly November morning and the room itself was very cold inside.. Once the owner of the building had put on the stage lights the room soon warmed up however a seriously cold draft came in if the door was opened.. The shoot was to be done firstly as a band and then individually. The studio was once a very busy TV studio and was now being used for XXX rated movies and seeing as 'Skin on Skin' is about sex, I don't think we could have picked a better place. I arrived and set up the drums in the corner of the white back drop stage.. the other guys soon followed... once all the gear was set up it was time for us to hit the dressing room for make-up. Well this was a very interesting moment as we all waited for the make-up artist to apply our pretty faces.. I decided to go the whole the whole hog and have the works..I mean, why not... Ched (Banned TV ) was directing and a fine job he did, started to direct us with regards to what he wanted us to do. Firstly the band shoot. The play back system was not the greatest and we struggled to hear it over the cymbals... I had pieces of carpet over the drums to kill the sound but I left the cymbals wide open. It's interesting when you lip-sync, your concentrating on staying in time and not looking a plonker and if you can't hear what your meant to be playing you can very quickly look a plonker whilst at the same time giving it the berries.. Once we had shot the band part of the video it was time for the individual shots.. I was up first and with a quick make-up check we went for three takes from different positions. We removed the carpet for these shots and the play back system was struggling to keep up with the volume of the drums.. The lights were ridiculously hot and after each shoot we needed a make-up check due to sweating.. Once I was done it was time for Abbz to do his thing followed by Ed, Brian and finally Nick.. While all this was going on there we guys who were editing the movies that were now being made in the studio and occasionally you would here the odd moan and groan which of course meant we would have to go and checkout what was happening and see who was doing what and with whom.. Andrew arrived later in the day as he and I were going to leave for Hard Rock Hell after the shoot, Rich Ward the DH web master also came along and took individual photo shots... Towards the end of the final set of shoots Mark Stuart (Magnum engineer & Mad Hat proprietor) stopped by the studio to ask me if I could record drums for Jimmy Lea (Slade) tomorrow... Now, we were playing Hard Rock Hell tomorrow and of course I said yes, Slade are my all time favorite band and Jimmy Lea was a huge influence for me.. I thought to myself later what have I got myself into... After Ched said the magic words "that's a wrap" we headed to the dressing room to remove our make up.. During this time Ed went for a roam around and found a small room full of marital aids and came out dangling something that looked like a babies arm from his waste..LOL :-) Andrew quickly broke down the drums in order for us to transport them to Mad Hat studios for the session with Jim Lea tomorrow.. Also Andrew was now going to head down to HRH on his own and sort everything out for us.. We all said our fair wells and headed home.. I went with and Andrew to Mad Hat studios to set up and meet Jimmy Lea. Thankfully we were not on until 3-am at HRH. Tomorrow was going to be along day.. Once at Mad Hat Andrew and I quickly set up and waited for a CD with the tunes I was to learn.. The CD contained 13 songs and I knew I was in for a long night writing cheat sheets out for these songs.. Once I had the disc in hand Andrew dove us back to my parents house and had dinner before he headed down to Butlins in Minehead which was at least a three hour drive and was the venue for Hard Rock Hell..I went straight in to listening to the CD and writing out my cheat sheets...I retired to bed around midnight with CD on repeat while I slept...Needless to say I didn't sleep much that night..I was buzzing with excitement for the days events and tomorrows studio date and kept waking up in the middle of a different tune each time... Stay tuned for 'in the studio with Jim Lea and Hard Rock Hell' tomorrow. Peace from DHQ |