HB's have been running a series of odd music to interesting footage challenges. This one sets Bill Evan's Nadis to some Red Bull F1 mayhem.
Placebo Twenty Years
Time stops for no man and it's been twenty years of musical creativity for melancholy rockers Placebo.
Having worked on the Battle for the Sun Tour in 2011 it was only natural that award winning lighting designer Jvan Morandi should invite us back for some more emo orientated fun.
HB's were set the task of reworking the original 16mm film rushes from Placebo's best-known videos. The quality of the footage was superb and once cut, graded and in some cases completely reanimated the footage mapped onto an eighteen metre LED screen made for a colourful, strobascopic specatacle.
Pottermore gift wrapped
As Christmas approached not only was the goose getting fat but HB's were getting mighty busy.
Having already worked with Harry Potter's digital arm Pottermore several times this year a special Christmassy package was proposed. Utilising Malcolm's stratospherically famous skills in the stop motion arena it didn't take long to produce this home spun confection of digital Christmas eye candy.
Jean-Michel-Jarre
As anyone who loves electronic music knows Jean-Michel-Jarre basically invented it, alright the bits that Kraftwerk didn't.
Still holding the record for the biggest global concerts ever it was natural that the Roi d'bleeps Francais should turn to Hadley Brothers for some eye popping visuals and animated action.
Working closely with long term collaborators Placing Shadows in the form of the Svengali of visuals Jvan Morandi and VFX gods Jonathan Klahr and Andy Morgan, the HB's team once again produced an epic and dazzling show, dubbed 'magnifique!' by the button pushing maestro himself.
NEGRAMARO ITALY 2015/16
They may not have that many fans in the UK but romantic pop/rock outfit Negramaro are currently Numero Uno on the boot shaped peninsula. Long term collaborator Jvan Morandi of Placing Shadows devised an adventurous animated visual feast in front of which the Negramaro six could play and croon.
Whilst smooth Italian romantic pop may not be top of my personal playlist HB's had a lot of fun creating the bits of shizzle that helped bring the show to life, perhaps my favourite being this minute and a half drum and bass solo that was timed exactly to the live beats.
A much loved tour is the result, who knows perhaps they'll come to the UK someday? Or maybe not.
Rosin Murphy
The Irish chartreuse and anti-diva is currently touring the planet for the first time in eight years. How one combines being a mother of two with being an antidote to the torrent of pop drivel in the audio universe I don't know, but I like to think that some bold, graphic and eye titillating visuals might go some way to help.
Enter the Hadley Brothers emboldened by the mighty Jvan Morandi (lighting designer) and Aaron Trinder (8 bit graphics) we edited, shot and animated like video marsupials till our eyes were big and our bellies were empty.
A short road trip with the show, a bit of tinkering in Brussels and Ms Murphy is set to recapture her audience and show the world that long before Lady Ga Ga smart lyrics and surreal outfits can go a long way to getting you noticed.
The Kooks
It's been a while since we created content for a live show, so it was with welcome arms that we embraced our old friend Jvan Morandi (lighting designer extraordinaire) and his schemes for the Kooks currently UK and soon to be World Tour. The Kooks are a loveable bunch of Brightonian fellas whose music seems to effortlessly embrace all manner of British sounding pop back to the time when Malcolm was in short trousers. What fun we had! Before I knew it Matt Brown and Steven Azencot rocked up to our place keen to assist us in creating simple bold psychedelic visuals, hand crafted for big lo res LED screens. I'm told that it's 'going down well' with the powers that be, so that's good then.
1ST ANNIVERSARY
Has it really been a year? It certainly has! Though we've been together since tots the Hadley Brothers emporium has been busy the past twelve months, as you can see from this updated edit reel which includes many of this years finest moments.
The Christians
Though not renowned for my religious convictions it’s always nice to do business with those who fight the good fight. So it was that the Hadley Brothers found themselves creating a minor masterpiece for the good people of St. Margaret’s Ilford. Like many places in the capital, Ilford has become a cultural melting pot in the most spectacular sense.
Indians, Bangladeshis, Africans, Caribbeans and British people pack the congregation. Proving as if it needed to be, that in world of terrorism, monetarism and Faragism, there’s still room for a few core Christian values including that most unfashionable of terms, love.
Success at Sheffield
In yet more exciting news, Still the Enemy Within has won the prestigious Audience award at this years Sheffield Documentary Festival 2014.
“It means a great deal to us to know that people not only enjoyed our film, but felt strongly about it enough to give us their votes, especially considering the quality of the competition. We are immensely honoured to have worked with some of the finest people I have ever met, and to have been allowed to tell their story. I just hope that more people will have the chance to be inspired by their courage through our movie, just as I have.” Owen Gower, Director
It's both a testament to the determination of those behind the film and the emotion that it provokes, that an independently produced and entirely crowd-funded documentary could win amongst such a strong line up of films at Sheffield.
The filmmakers are currently in talks about further distribution for the film.
Bravo!
CRISIS 2014
There are few projects in life that tick all the boxes, but one that combines successful fundraising with top draw film production surely comes close. Having won the IVCA Grand Prix last year this is the fifth year directing the project and it just keeps getting better. The old team are back once more to conjure up more feel good christmassy vibes with the hard grafting vocal and percussion talents drawn from Crisis members.
The mighty Rex Horan musically directed our cast to produce an array of harmonic and percussive sounds that are in a league of their own. This years films are being produced by Jon Brigden and the good folk at Giggle, they'll be released by the end of October, so if you're a business that wants to send the most successful charity e-card available don't forget to check out www.crisis.org.uk in the autumn.
Neville and his nuts.
Football Frenzy
Had enough footy yet? I'm just hitting my stride having spent a week in Lisbon cutting Follow the Cup shorts for UEFA's Champions League FB page. Produced by Ear to the Ground the films are the brainchild of long haired maverick director Ben Urwin. Ben and his cameraman sidekick Ben Falk have spent the last three months traveling the globe with the Champions League Trophy tucked under their arms and tiny bullet cams glued all over it.
Not surprisingly people went nuts wherever they produced the magic cup. Buenos Aires, Madrid, Ho Chi Minh were all subjected to the pandaemonium. The result? Some fantastic footage and a set of pacey, bonkers fan worshiping moments that couldn't have been captured any other way. The price, the mental health of several hard working editors who had to sort the wheat from the chaff, and let me tell you there was a lot of chaff.
I can't begin to calculate the quantity of footage in minutes, but once the eight and a half terabytes of moving randomness had loaded into my tired old Macpro there were no less than six and a half thousand clips (many of them longer than 2 hours) from which to select the golden two minutes forty.
Humanity of course has a long tradition of creating grand, expensive and ultimately pointless things. The Pyramids, landing on the moon, BBC3. This film must surely take it's place amongst them.
Back to The North
A stupidly busy week on two shoots: one short drama, one doc. The later was a return to lovely Yorkshire, which is never a bad thing, for what should be the last shoot for the feature documentary Still the Enemy Within.
We spent much of the time roaming the small towns between Sheffield and Leeds (where there were lots of mines once, prior to M. Thatcher) eating chips with scraps - those crispy bits to you Southerners- and dodging showers for a few extra shots.
For our studio shoot we needed to reproduce a soft, overcast light to match an earlier interview and so I opted for the classic overhead frame wedge- always a firm favourite. The studio we hired was a little short on gear, to be polite, and so it was a bit of a challenge.
It was a return to the Canon C300, the workhorse camera on this project and nice and light after a few shoots with the Sony F55.
The film promises to be a fascinating insight into the real lives of those who experienced the Miner's Strike first hand and will be premiered at this years Sheffield's doc fest on June 7th follow the link for more details and booking https://sheffdocfest.com/films/5623
Super soft wedge in action
IVCA Winners
There we sat surrounded by the glamorous and over dressed waiting for our number to come up and it did!
Firstly with a Gold for Best Music Category and then scooping the Grand Prix, the best film of 2014 judged from all of the entrants to the awards.
Rex (freelance musician and composer extraordinaire) and Kayvan (post production mixer and composer) from SNK, we salute you for your devotion, time and patience that you committed to the project.
A huge thanks to Steve at Giggle Group who supported our entrance to the event and of course to the good folk at Crisis who have invited us to work with their members again to create this years offering.
The last word must surely go to Gentle, who sadly passed away last year, a kind and softly spoken man who appears in the Silent Night Film of the series. He silenced a room of one thousand party goers and for a minute reminded us that sometimes the most important voices are the ones that go unheard.
A Certified Editor
These days you really can't be considered a bona fide editor unless you have a certificate. Now I have one I feel all you know, certified. Thanks a million to Tony and the patient folk at Soho Editors for pointing me in the right direction. Is AVID better than FCP? Is Premiere a cheeky pretender? Doubtless the debate will run to eternity.