News
Daylight are Cherry picked
Published 15.08.07
“People Help the People,” the latest single from Manchester based band Cherry Ghost, has been enjoying some rather significant radio play of late, thanks to high profile spots on both the BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 playlists.
Simon Aldred, the man behind Cherry Ghost, survived time with a number of acclaimed local bands to sign with Heavenly Records as his most recent incarnation. Aldred created a veritable A&R frenzy with his music which, according to the band’s MySpace page, has been “inspired by the haunting melancholy of acts such as Sparklehorse, Smog, Johnny Cash and the ceaseless hope to be found at the heart of this northern landscape.”
An all important (and expensive!) promo video to accompany the track was shot by a London production company in Arizona. Despite the big budget the band were unhappy with the video, feeling it did not fit with the song and decided they needed to try and find a suitable alternative. So, three weeks before the single release, Cherry Ghost’s management decided to make a last ditch attempt at re-shooting a video, calling on in-the-know cohorts for recommendations. As a result, photographer Scott Kershaw, who has worked closely with Simon and the band previously, suggested that Stuart Bentley – co-founder of Manchester based Daylight Moving Image and avid skate film director – might be the man for the job.
Stuart successfully pitched his idea and it was agreed that he shoot an alternative promo for a fraction of the cost and with only two weeks to do it.
Explaining the thinking behind the video Stuart said, “I wanted the Cherry Ghost video to have a very realistic documentary style. I thought the combination of non-professional actors, gritty northern locations and the overall visual style of the film would complement the song’s heartfelt lyrics.”
The video was shot over four days across various urban landscapes in and around Manchester, including Rusholme, the Northern Quarter, Bolton and Salford, with the aim of capturing interesting places and characters. Although locations were decided before the crew set out to shoot, a lot of the footage included in the final cut was captured on the fly, with the majority of people in the video being approached in the first instance on the street.
“Due to the time and budget constraints it was an exciting challenge to bring Stuart’s vision to life.” says Daylight’s MD and co-producer of the video Matt Smith. “The visual style of the piece is to have constant movement - a continuous tracking shot which gives a fleeting view of these interesting scenarios and characters. However to actually deliver this without the expense of costly dolly tracks and low loaders we had the director of photography hanging out of cars, riding skateboards and being pushed in a wheelchair”. “Shooting in Manchester was, as always, a great experience. Everyone was really helpful and we encountered very few problems, even with the small crew and limited time we had,” added Stuart.
After only three days editing the promo in-house at Daylight, it was pretty much ready for broadcast - that’s a very impressive one week turnaround.
The end result is a moving montage of landscape and portrait shots, the camera elegantly panning across what is an undeniably northern setting. Needless to say, our man in Arizona was canned and Bentley’s beautiful video was chosen to accompany People Help the People, making for a very northern success story.
