Raine Allen Miller

0:04[Applause]

0:13hello I'm rain I am a director I'm represented by some such which is amazing production company a little bit of a background on me is that I started my career in advertising so I was an advertising creative and I used to work in a pair with my friend Lisa turn away forever you are and yeah working in advertising is quite interesting because you learn a lot you get to work on big shoes big budget but I was kind of feeling a little bit frustrated and kind of wanted firstly to kind of go past a minute because obviously absolute usually around 60 seconds and also I kind of watched a lot of these directors on shoots and thought maybe in a slightly arrogant way oh I reckon I could do that.

1:00So I nagged a friend who had just got a job at some search and just said look send me any briefs that you possibly can even if it's like 500 quid you know like startup musician or whatever I just want to make I just want to make a music video and that that ended up being my first video and we did a few more and then.

1:22I got signed by sunset so today oh well that was supposed to be the first slide mmm so today I'm going to talk about a music video that I shot I'm not sure you remember when but a while ago not that long ago but while back for Danai Moore who is a fantastic musician and yeah I'll just play it. And then I'll talk through the process ♪

2:11stranger things and for it's pushing me further be you never see it coming ♪

2:23feeling not be fine myself not to see too much in the litter loves to be on my own know what I do when everything see ♪

2:51it will trickle in the Yukon dingo to the never grow ♪

3:09strangers ♪

3:23it'd be son a hard see to be I'm you and everything ♪

5:00[Applause]

5:03[Laughter]

5:31thank you. And it's quite funny that ending is always really awkwardly long but I kind of like that and quite a few people have said that I needed to cut it earlier but I like that it's so awkward and the reason is is because the track is about anxiety and it's quite it really it's interesting for me because I also suffer from anxiety and often it's sort of seen as like quite a dark thing and you know it's often associated with depression and you know when you think of like an anxious person you sort of think of like this well you know it's kind of like it's never seen as very colorful or creative or I don't know sometimes even quite funny and so with the video I what I wanted to do is sort of show that it comes in many forms and the brief deniz brief was quite open but it did mention about flowers and growth and how it's kind of she sort of talked about how it's about anxiety and that she was really interested in incorporating flowers in there and and I really liked that idea because I like the idea of sort of a pretty look being made into something.

6:43That's about anxiety anyway I'm rambling the first thing that I kind of wanted to do is some people put flowers is I'm obsessed with a stock frame animation. And I remember doing it in GCSE art my yeah I remember doing stop frame GCSE arts and I've been I've been looking up gifts of like flowers growing and I thought what could be really nice is to actually cut out every frame in a growing flower gift which is why we've got a few hopefully you noticed it.

7:20But there's quite a few moments where we've got that in there. And so that's kind of where that idea came from so the video is like a lot of kind of thoughts that I've had and wanted to put into this weird explosion of like anxiety comes in many forms but yeah. So that was a nightmare doing that it took forever to cut out every frame here's a picture of the animator who was fantastic they were spending hours doing that.

7:49And then the other thing that I was really interested in is the idea of Danai being at the spine of the film because you know they're her words and a shot that I've always loved is the first shot of orange I'll just quickly play I'm sure most of you know it ♪

8:17[Applause]

8:53you sort of get the point anyway.

8:56But yeah I like the idea of doing this tracking shot where she's kind of at the center of the video but it's all you know all the moments that happen to kind of her kind of in her mind and so yeah that that was another thought and then.

9:10I also get really obsessed with certain things like I don't think I'm a diva director but there'll be one thing that I'll just be like I need that I need that.

9:21And I'd looked up I think it was like when I've been gue googling with YouTube you know you go on YouTube binge and you're looking up with funny videos and I found this which is like amazing I saw this thing online and thought it would be a good idea to get one so far it's pretty impossible to assemble hilarious I just thought I need to have this I need to have these in my video and it kind of made sense and just having these sharks or for men because they're like kind of angry you know the scary moment but also quite beautiful anyway.

10:03So yeah that that was another thought and they kind of all I guess I I sort of sounds like chaos might I get my wine kinda does work white is big chaotic but I managed to sort of weave it into one idea which is like I've said several times anxiety comes in many forms and they wrote treatment and and Denis was really into it and her thing was that she just wanted it to be as weird and creepy as possible which I loved and I'll quickly talk about the shoot gigs I've just realized I've been rambling on for ages it we had one day to do it.

10:43And it was quite complicated because we had the tracking shot which meant that we had to shoot it at 75 frames a second which meant in this shot all together that long dolly shot was actually about 20 seconds so when we were shooting everyone has to be kind of times so like when the Sharks came in they were operated by a person so he had a choreographer my friend Haley just going sharks and you know everyone kind of had to do everything in time you only ended up doing about six takes and I think we ended up using the second-to-last so it's quite a chaotic shoot but really fun and there's my I was I was really pleased with my big big bit of equipment there I don't really know that much about technical stuff but I was really happy about that.

11:30And then for the sort of cutaways it made sense have a really strong performance and I'm really obsessed with curtains so I liked the idea of having this kind of green world cuz greens quite creepy and it's got a lot of meanings and yeah but the only thing that wasn't planned was that sort of still life set up and the dog I just needed to have that dog in there and he's so cute so but yeah that was that's those two things are the things I was like okay why don't we just quickly move some of these props because I didn't feel like you got to see them enough in the wide shot and so we quickly did a little setup of that that our director they was amazing but yeah that all of that stuff was shot on 16 millimeter film which is really fun I love film and there's the setup which just looks crap but hopefully you know you can't really tell that it was that crap and little bit backward a sort of post I guess post-production on it so my reference is similarly to Holly Holly actually I'm really interested in looking at sort of paintings and getting a painterly look rather than a kind of pristine I don't know like digital look.

12:45So these are my references for cinematography James Bond my DRP who is amazing literally and then.

12:52I worked with a great color is called Jack McGinty it's a base art and yeah they did an amazing job. And it was really important for me for it to feel quite painterly and surreal cuz I just felt like yeah it kind of makes sense the idea.

13:08But also I feel like I've seen lots of glossy music videos and I wanted it to be a little bit more raw and then lastly maybe yeah the Edit for me was like the thing that made it amazing and my editor Matt added in the weirdest little things and he used to cut trailers and I don't know if you watch it if you ever watch it again he's added in all these amazing kind of epic sound effects which I just thought was incredible and like little details like the dog licking his mouth and I just thought that really made it. And I'm always quite mean about my own work.

13:42But I am quite proud of that. And it wasn't just me obviously it's always a big team of people. And it was awesome and yeah thank you for listening [Applause]