I was approached by a band from Nuneaton called ‘Puma XIII’ (you can find some of their stuff here on SoundCloud) to film a performance taking place in Leicester at The Musician pub venue. My good friend and lead vocalist and guitar player Adam Norman asked if I was available for a shoot taking place on the 9th December 2015, they were looking for shots of the band, including Dexter Kingston on drums and Jordan Handley on bass, in action that they could later sync to some pre-recorded music to use as a promotional video for their various social media platforms.
In order to capture the performance most effectively I knew I would need the assistance of a secondary cameraman so that whilst one of us captured the wider shot of the band in action, the other could dart around at the front of stage getting closer action shots. For this I turned to my fellow colleague Matthew Kerr de Salles, a man with so much technical knowledge and practice in the field that I knew I could trust him with any given task and feel free to continue about mine. Matthew was more than willing to get involved and even offered to drive us to the location and bring some of his personal equipment as well. I allowed Matthew to focus on capturing the wider shot whilst I made use of a prime lens to get the more intimate shots of the band members in action.
The prime lenses were an excellent choice and allowed me to capture the beautiful depths to the focus that you can see in the above stills. They also meant that I didn’t have to fiddle around with a zoom in the darkness and could instead frame and focus my shots perfectly and without the added weight of a mounted zoom lens. I incorporated the use of some dynamic dutch angles to create a more intense and active feel to the shots often seen in music videos, especially those of this particular genre of music.
Working with Puma XIII, the team at The Musician and Matthew was overall an extremely enjoyable and positive experience. I feel that from this I learnt how to think fast and on my feet in a similar way filming live sports does, something that just can’t be gained from shooting narrative driven film. I am thankful to all involved and those who gave their time to assist and look forward to the next opportunity I have to work with the amazing Puma XIII again.
Dreaming of Escape 