I'm In Your Area
I'm exhausted, and all the coffee and carrot cake in the world can't bring me back to life, but I'm still running on adrenaline from last night. Just. Waiting for AMP to flickr her photos but until then...
Filming is weird. It's just odd and ever so slightly unnatural. But our crack team from the BBC, Jon and Simon, did their best to be patient with us. I was quite relived that techie Simon is also a musician as a hobbie, so we chatted a lot beforehand about pedals and programming software - and he did sound and worked the board so everything sounded good and I could just concentrate on playing.
First thing you notice is the HEAT. It is SOOOO hot. The bloody lights... it's even hotter than being on stage, which is warm enough. Everything just melts. I didn't bring makeup, and ended up a sweaty mess even as we were still soundchecking, so I had to borrow Anna's weird jaundice-inducing powder for gingers just to avoid looking like a cross between the dying Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Arc and sweating bloke out of Broadcast News. Ugh.
And it's hard. It's much harder than either playing a gig or recording. Because when you're recording, you're concentrating on being perfect, on getting the notes just right. But when you're playing live, you're far more interested in the performance - in emoting and yes, looking cool (or at least, looking like you mean it.) So I kinda hid in the back the first couple of takes, and made sure that the Audiomaster (I still don't get the difference between audiomaster and audioslave) was perfect. Then for the other takes, I could jump about like a neejot and make guitar faces.
And my god, how many takes you have to do. It's not quite marks and "hit that spot" but we did about eight different takes of the song, with the camera in different places. Poor Anna and Marianna got close-ups with the camera right up their noses. Me? I got the camera in my sodding CROTCH. When they Access All Areas, they get it right in your Area.
I have always wondered why, when they go for close-ups on guitarist, they never show the fretting hand fingerwork (which is actually the interesting bit) - they only ever show the picking hand (which is, frankly, dull). So I asked Simon, and he said it was because shooting *up* the fretboard gives a more visually interesting visual with more action. So we filmed the whole song with the camera closer to me than a man's been in years, with only my Jazzmaster to protect my beerbelly (oh god, stand up straight, suck yer belly in, wait, no, hit the solo like Pete Townsend, oh god, so much to remember... ARGH! what key's it in?) I guess if every guitarist from Jimi Hendrix to Benjamin Curtis has had to go through this, I can survive the indignity, too.
The last take was just us mucking about, random stuff, handheld camera stuff, shots of the laptop - and I insisted we get shots of the pedals (playing wah which has no place on this song whatsoever! hah!)! I even attacked AMPy with the guitar at the very end. That's one for Up The Arse Corner.
And that's that. Three hours work for a minute and a half segment. It'll be on BBC Breakfast TV some time during the week starting 11/09/2006. Apparently. I still can't quite get my head around it. My entire life, I wanted to be on TOTP. This reaches an audience about 10 times that of TOTP.
Then the four of us went out for drinks afterwards, and just talked. Mainly to wind down from the adrenaline high, and also to talk about what's been up recently. I can't remember the last time the four of us just got together to talk about stuff. It felt good, really good. And I think we've worked out our issues... or at least, are on the path to working them out. Things are gonna change. I hope for the better.
Filming is weird. It's just odd and ever so slightly unnatural. But our crack team from the BBC, Jon and Simon, did their best to be patient with us. I was quite relived that techie Simon is also a musician as a hobbie, so we chatted a lot beforehand about pedals and programming software - and he did sound and worked the board so everything sounded good and I could just concentrate on playing.
First thing you notice is the HEAT. It is SOOOO hot. The bloody lights... it's even hotter than being on stage, which is warm enough. Everything just melts. I didn't bring makeup, and ended up a sweaty mess even as we were still soundchecking, so I had to borrow Anna's weird jaundice-inducing powder for gingers just to avoid looking like a cross between the dying Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Arc and sweating bloke out of Broadcast News. Ugh.
And it's hard. It's much harder than either playing a gig or recording. Because when you're recording, you're concentrating on being perfect, on getting the notes just right. But when you're playing live, you're far more interested in the performance - in emoting and yes, looking cool (or at least, looking like you mean it.) So I kinda hid in the back the first couple of takes, and made sure that the Audiomaster (I still don't get the difference between audiomaster and audioslave) was perfect. Then for the other takes, I could jump about like a neejot and make guitar faces.
And my god, how many takes you have to do. It's not quite marks and "hit that spot" but we did about eight different takes of the song, with the camera in different places. Poor Anna and Marianna got close-ups with the camera right up their noses. Me? I got the camera in my sodding CROTCH. When they Access All Areas, they get it right in your Area.
I have always wondered why, when they go for close-ups on guitarist, they never show the fretting hand fingerwork (which is actually the interesting bit) - they only ever show the picking hand (which is, frankly, dull). So I asked Simon, and he said it was because shooting *up* the fretboard gives a more visually interesting visual with more action. So we filmed the whole song with the camera closer to me than a man's been in years, with only my Jazzmaster to protect my beerbelly (oh god, stand up straight, suck yer belly in, wait, no, hit the solo like Pete Townsend, oh god, so much to remember... ARGH! what key's it in?) I guess if every guitarist from Jimi Hendrix to Benjamin Curtis has had to go through this, I can survive the indignity, too.
The last take was just us mucking about, random stuff, handheld camera stuff, shots of the laptop - and I insisted we get shots of the pedals (playing wah which has no place on this song whatsoever! hah!)! I even attacked AMPy with the guitar at the very end. That's one for Up The Arse Corner.
And that's that. Three hours work for a minute and a half segment. It'll be on BBC Breakfast TV some time during the week starting 11/09/2006. Apparently. I still can't quite get my head around it. My entire life, I wanted to be on TOTP. This reaches an audience about 10 times that of TOTP.
Then the four of us went out for drinks afterwards, and just talked. Mainly to wind down from the adrenaline high, and also to talk about what's been up recently. I can't remember the last time the four of us just got together to talk about stuff. It felt good, really good. And I think we've worked out our issues... or at least, are on the path to working them out. Things are gonna change. I hope for the better.
posted by Masonic Boom | 1:53 pm
3 Comments:
I am, seriously, glad to hear that.
impressive, isn't it?
i always assumed they shot the pick hand because it was too diffcult to keep the camera on the fret hand unless it's just hanging out there, doing barre chords.
I always assumed it was rockist nonsense - Yeah, this hand is making the music, but that other hand's only modifying it, that hand's not important.
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