Nancy's one take video

You've probably seen her on viewmagazine.tv

Nancy Ginindza - rock chic ( as in sheek) heads back to Swaziland for a while, but not before we knock off her next video: Hunt me like an animal from her myspace.

The one above was a one take wonder: 3 minutes work for a 2.40 vid, handheld using the A1Sony

This time we're plannng something a bit more...well..it involves paint.

But if we can do it "Lars von Trier" style in a couple of minutes/hours...

Pop videos - VJs versatlity

One of the interviews I looked forward to about this time last year was with Flash web designer Hillman Curtis.

If you have no idea who he is; I didn't in 98, then google him. He is to Flash Design what Rageh Omar is to news, cool and a leader with a pioneering style of his own.

I'd read on many occasions his self-taught style to film making and in particular how he ballsed up on one or two. Sure enough, candid and self effacing he said what resonates pretty loud with me.

"I messed up a music shoot badly. I know what I do well, so best leave music shoots to others".

I have just finished a music shoot for a friend and was TDB yesterday. TDB an acronym from my school boarding days - working Till Day Break. Having got back from a really nice gathering with the FT ( Sorry Financial Times) at midnight, I thought I'd give it a ago.

An hour in and I'd got this segment sorted. The shoot itself used two cameras; one from my colleage Kienda Hoji as I roamed. The logic is to lay continuous track on the number you want and then find appropriate cutaways, elsewhere.

But as you know Pop Music has an edit rate that would give your grand mother an aneurism. But really there's almost a template you can work from to produce a relatively ok video. I had my 12 year old nephew up to speed on his own within an hour.

Not so much then the pop video itself; sorry Like Hillman I'd rather create something else, it's the versatility of Vjism which deserves a mention. Short news formats; long one hours; series; pop promos; ads; and a car show.

My parting shot though should go to where it's deserving; the artiste Nancy Ginindza who's music inspires me.

Do fries come with that shake; music with that newspaper

Hahahahaha that's er stoopid idea.

Where can I buy it? Sunday newspaper The Daily Mail rarely finds the dinning table of my house, but today for the princely sum of 1.40 ukp it came with a Prince. No not Charlie, but the one that dare not speak his name.

Throughout the week the press has been trailing the move as a revoultion in itself, purposefully grabbing aggrieved music shop owners to say the inevitable: " We're really pissed this guy's giving away his music when we've supported him for so long. Now he kicks us in the teeth".

The deal to have his whole CD carried by a newspaper could be the equivalent of buying a plane on the Net. Yep E-bay reports that's long happened as well. Difference is Prince is a commercial brand with a slew of joined up businesses behind him.

Reports of 1/4 to 1 mil have been mooted for the Purple one to have been carried straight from his paisly park to the people, and that money presumably negates overheads and shares of all manner of calculations e.g. promotion, CEO's lunch, Prince's taxis. So Mr P must be feeling peachy.

Sight unseen, without breaking a sweat tracking sales, his pockets are laden with gold. The reaction from the record shops has been amusing. No, correction! The quotes pulled out from the media for public consumption are amusing.

Music is not a church of the altruistics, so the first thing a record boss is asking when they stock an artist is :"What's the projected sales and our cut".

You sell, we take.

The idea that the record shops have been hard done has a bit of schadenfreude about it. The equivalent perhaps of saying: "I just had to turn up to Prince's exclusive gig at the Cafe de Paris, otherwise can you imagine how embarrassed that would be for him". Incidently, no ones talking about how brilliant it is for consumers.

Me, whether it came with a paper or not, I'm there. A life-long Prince fan, as an undergraduate I'd rather go hungry than forfeit buying or searching for his vinyl. OMG that word, vinyl, sounds soooo. But behind me lay a stack of albums collected within my under and post grad years as a music lover and DJ.

A precocious young man burst on he scene with this album and wow, have some of that. Then the track "Kiss", playing at a one of London's funkiest clubs in the 90's "The Cat in the Hat" made me punk-dive for the first time. At Wembley stadium for about three seconds I held onto his smallish no-label yellow jacket, before some hood wrenched it away from all our sweaty palms. I guess he wanted it more, but he did let me try it on.

No doubt they'll be ooming and umming in the music biz about Prince's dishonour, but expect many other artists to follow suit. It's simple: the net, Myspace, whatever, give an artist direct access to us and that's what every artists wants. No doubt also the music bosses will want to woo back Prince to the table for a better deal with his next release. Not a bad strategy Mr P.

In one year Prince becried how he wanted to just get his music out but his mighty label, with the law of supply and demand in mind, wasn't having none of it.

So next week a Jag with the Sunday Times, a diamond encrusted ring with my cornflakes. Welcome to the third way or as Harvard Review would write this quarter, the integrated approach. More on that on viewmagazine.tv

Meanwhile, I'm off to listen to Prince and incidently talking about amazing artists get some of this: Nancy, abs fab singer songwriter with an a generous and groing base.
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5 hours later... Ok for the mean time the ever prescient Prince has pulled another anthem. As with 1999 that got wheeled out for every occasion to mark the millennium, Planet Earth the first track will become the trademark for all that's wrong with the planet. It plays around with old Prince and something Isley Brotherish. Expect to hear this played to death, unless the planet and everyone dies first. Urggh how morbid.

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