Imogen Heap came to the studio last week to film the video for her new song 'Lifeline'. I was exceptionally lucky to not only meet my favourite musician, but also work creatively with her & her team, including body painting her.
It all came about after I watched one of Imogen's live video blogs recently and heard how she wanted a wooden floor in her new video, so I emailed her & suggested the studio that my partner (John Spence) runs - 'The Pub Studio'. Consequently, she decided to shoot the video at the studio, and also came across John & I's work - asking us to be involved creatively. Imogen also decided she wanted to be body painted for the video after seeing John's personal project 'Paint It Black'.
On the day of filming, I painted Imogen's whole body white, which proved to be a little tricky with this colour having a reputation for being the worst colour to apply. We persevered though & Imogen was eventually transformed into a much paler version of herself! Images that fans had sent to her were then projected onto her newly white back while the camera panned around her body, where she sat surrounded by interchanging floors of leaves, grass, metal, sheepskin & of course- wood. John was predominantly in charge of lighting the shoot & did a fantastic job.
Imogen was meant to have her whole body painted black as well, but we ran out of time. We did manage to paint her face & neck black though, but this meant doing it while she blogged live as she had a blog date with her fans! So if you'd like to see me painting Imogen black while she talks live about the progress of the video & song, watch this video (there will be about 30secs of ads at the beginning):
Tom Kelly (director, camera man, editor of video) did a few quick takes of her singing Lifeline while she was painted black, and John did a quick photo shoot later too.
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| Imogen & I, after white paint & before black! |
Party at Imogen's, Mon 28th March 2011 -
Last night after I'd finished my Same.As talk in central London, we rushed to the outskirts to attend Imogen Heap's party at her beautiful house. Greeted with delicious food, ample drink & friendly faces, we had a great time. Imogen was extremely trusting inviting so many people to her house, including many fans who had contributed a sound or image to Lifeline; and showed us round her recording studio where she played us the final version of this incredible new song. We were also invited to see the first showing of the video that John & I had hosted the filming of & assisted on. The video blew us away, with Tom doing a fantastic job of filming & editing it.
The video should be up tomorrow, as well as a making-of film soon too. [The video is now available to watch here.]