Baby I lost a lot of sleep…

As I sat and pondered which delicious topping I was going to spread over my pancakes, I received a message asking if I would like to be involved in the making of a music video for an artist who was currently on BBC’s The Voice UK. Of course I immediately put my peanut butter down and began researching everything there was to know about this Joe Keegan chap.

I started by watching his previous music videos and spilling all the ideas bouncing around my head down onto my note pad. I could see I was going to be working with a very gifted individual so it was key for me to capture that in my filming. I then gathered information from influential artists Joe was following on Twitter to form the first rough mental edit of what I could realistically achieve.

After my phone call with the lovely Joe, I had now learnt the music video needed to be completed and edited by Saturday 8th March (that was a week to the day I was contacted) with Joe also wanting to record the track in a studio too. I began to wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew. I had no previous experience in the professional audio recording industry; the most I had used was a simple external SM3 microphone plugged into a Sony NX5 for ambient and diagetic sound. I had little knowledge of how to record instruments or vocal singing at all. Then I said to myself, who doesn’t like a challenge?

I watched dozens of YouTube tutorials on ‘How to record an acoustic track’ and narrowed it down to the SM7 and SM8 microphone setups. I still needed help. So I began scrolling through every contact I had until a little light bulb illuminated above my head. My friend Jess at LIPA (Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts)! She passed me onto the fantastic mixing and sound engineers Max Taylor and Saam Jafarzadeh, who were keen to get involved and lifted the weight of the music recording off my shoulders and into their more than equipped recording studio at LIPA.

Meanwhile, my co-director Alex Wise and I were discussing and arranging the most suitable equipment to film with for the shoot and securing locations. I decided it was best to film on two different cameras simultaneously for a quick and diverse selection of footage. I would operate a Sony NX5 mounted on a glide track (I would highly recommend any budgeted filmmaker to invest in this genius device) which would gives smooth tracking movement to the shots and a richer texture. While my co-director would film on a Canon 7D mounted on a static tripod providing quicker set ups and angles of shooting. With the filming equipment agreed on, we decided to get fellow student and friend Jamie Toal to accompany us on the shoot to photograph stills of Joe.

Now we had what we were filming on, it was now where. I had contacted a friend of mine who had given the thumbs up to access a breathtaking location on a LJMU rooftop, looking over Liverpool City Centre. However after all the hours of research, I knew one location would have been far too tedious to watch; I was looking for something special. Once again through the power of networking and proving the famous saying of it’s not what you know it’s who you know, Alex managed to secure the high reputable Cavern Club birthing non other than The Beatles. It was now Sunday, the day we were pitching to Joe our ideas and proposal and in a mere 48 hours we had secured locations, a recording studio and filming equipment accompanied with a crew. When meeting Joe and “sick means boss” father Mike in the Cavern Club, I was blown away by their eager passion and response. It was all set and ready to go.

Monday arrived and Alex and I decided to film a 2 and a half hour time lapse of the sunset for the opening of the music video. We took the Canon 7D and left it static. As my hands lost their feeling and the heart wrenching battery light flashed red it seemed it wasn’t quite our day however the footage begged to differ. I also receieved a call and had managed to rope The Epstein Theatre‘s lighting engineer Greg Jones to come along and help out for the staging shoot in The Cavern Club the following day. All the planning was in was in place, now all the was left was to do.

Tuesday arrived and we were all set and ready to go. Two different camera angles it’s the 7D set up static and the NX5 on the glide track I was confident. As Joe sat onto the exclusively closed-off-for-filming back stage in The Cavern Club, surrounded by signed thank you photos mounted on the walls by artists such as Adele, it was only then I realised what we had achieved.

As I sat back in the neck straining chair for the 14th hour of editing, listening to ‘Baby I’ve been, I’ve been losing sleep’ for the 10,000 time, I finally saw what we had achieved; we had pulled it off, above everyone and even my own expectations.

As part of his battle winning campaign, I also worked with Joe to create a few Vine posts. Joe was encouraged by the BBC to drum up some humorous ‘fighting talk’ ahead of the show, directed at his opponent. They worked out brilliantly and got a great response across his social media channels. You can see all of the Vines right here!

Watch the full music video on my YouTube channel and if you like Joe’s music, check out Joe Keegan Music too!