Behind The Scenes: Legacy (Music Video)

Behind The Scenes: Legacy (Music Video)

Artist: Saint https://www.saintmusik.co.uk/

Director and editor: Thomas Adcock

Cinematographer: Samuel Oxton https://www.instagram.com/samoxton/

After the successful production of the music video for One In The Chamber, the team returned to create the visuals for Saint’s second single off of his project Laws Of The Jungle, Legacy. Bringing everything I learned from the first video, such as the importance of planning and communication with the guys I was working with, there were even more challenges that presented themselves on this shoot. One new factor of this video that I had to face was working with actors and performers for one of the scenes. Something I’ve never really done before, I had to step up as a director to help the performers understand the vision we were trying to accomplish.

The actors were a part of the main scene of the video, which was Saint’s performance with them behind him. This was integral to get right as it conveyed the message of the video, the idea of the legacy Saint will leave behind and the people he affects. As the director I had to ensure any communication to the cast was on point, meaning clear instructions that were easy to take on board. Because of my inexperience in doing that, it was somewhat difficult to do. This was especially apparent when it came to getting everyone in sync at certain moments like having everybody bop up and down in rhythm or raising their heads on a beat drop. We got there in the end though, achieving the look of the group being Saint’s followers.

There is another performance scene in the video, that being a solo one of just Saint. From the start, Saint wanted to shoot this bit in Loco Klub. This a set of dark underground tunnels in Bristol that holds events. We managed to secure this location, which was ideal as it matched the aesthetics of the film that Saint had in mind. Thanks to our cinematographer and lightning guy, Sam, the idea to add a fog machine to the scene with the spotlight shining on Saint added to the overall cinematic and slick feel of the music video. For the group performance part, we needed a dark room as the location to hold it in with lights shining onto our subjects to highlight them. We decided to use a space in the tunnels by the spot where we did the solo performance for the music video, this was convenient as we could shoot both on the same day. Both performances came out nicely, with Saint bringing energy and capturing the rawness of the song with his rendition of it. Another element to aid with the energy was the movement of the camera. We initially shot both performances with the camera on a tripod, so all the shots were static. This appeared to make the music video way less energetic and didn’t match the pace and the upbeat nature of the song. To bring back the energy we wanted, I added the handheld camera movement in post to attain it.

The third scene that was intertwined with the two performances was a bit that essentially showed Saint creating his legacy, which is his music. We used a music studio above the warehouse where we shot some of One In The Chamber to do it in. In this location we filmed the process of Saint coming up with the single, starting with the writing stage and all the way to actually recording it. Coloured lights were set up as well to add some brightness and vibrancy to the video, switching it up from the dark brown and black tones of the performances.

The edit for the music video went pretty smoothly with no hiccups, and a version that Saint was happy with was settled on. Looking back on it now, the shoot for Legacy went a lot smoother than One In The Chamber. This I feel was mainly due to the extensive planning we all did like filling out the pre-production paperwork and good communication with each other, meaning the filming day was efficient but effective with fewer things having to be improvised as we were prepared for them. This was learnt from the first single’s video when those kinds of skills and disciplines were developed. Again, in doing this music video, directing the performers was a learning curve but just getting stuck in and learning on the job seemed to work again.

…Tommy (Drop The Mic Productions)

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