GUEST BLOG - The Undivided "7 Hours" Shoot by Lewis Bray (Undivided Guitarist)

"We can make the streets completely empty and have the city in flames around the main character - real end of the world stuff!"

"Erm, you do know we have a budget, right?"

Ambition is something that really drives us as a band, be that in ourselves or ides from anybody we work with. Naturally this drew us back to Silvertip films, which whom we shot our first professional video, "Wasted Time" back in August 2011. Back then they had taken a simple performance and coaxed passionate, sweat-drenched (hottest day of the year, filming in direct midday sun) performances out of each of us and produced the kind of professional video we could only have dreamed about before.

But shooting the end of the world on the budget of an unsigned band? Surely this was going to be a tough one.

Planning for the "7 Hours" video had actually started just a month or two after "Wasted Time" started getting airplay, with all 4 of us agreeing we wanted to work with Geoff and Ben again as they had some great ideas and we felt we had a good chemistry with them - something very important when you have a camera in your face for hours under the heat of the lighting.

"Wasted Time" had been a straight band performance video but we decided this time round we wanted to include a narrative element to take things up a notch. None of us knew what we wanted to do or even WHAT was possible. Geoff came back to us very quickly with a treatment about a girl running around an empty city with the time counting down to a mysterious ending. Buildings would burn, streets wold be deserted and in one planned scene which we sadly didn't get to realise, planes would fall out of the skies!

We were assured that this could all be done on time and in budget, so put our faith in Silvertip.

The shoot itself was split into 2 days, with the band in first for the performance shots and the narrative on day 2. We arrived early and shattered from a long drive from south Wales to Ealing but after a coffee and a catch up with Geoff and Ben we were setting up ready to go. 

Performing for video shoot is a bit odd - while you have to look like you are actually playing it can actually look a bit too boring sometimes, meaning you need to throw yourself into it a little more than usual - but we only had a few set of bleeding fingers this time round from over-enthusiastic guitar miming! 

We very nearly ran into a big issue shooting this video: Wales v England - we were NOT missing the rugby! We came prepared: big screen tv set up in the control room and a bit of food so we could all take a well earned break before getting back to it for the final shots. Just goes to show how accommodating Silvertip are, even on a tight schedule! 

Sadly we weren't able to stay for the second day of shooting in Guildford and Horsham with Libby Gore -a great actress that Silvertip recommended us from their previous projects. They did keep in constant touch and had a short Skype chat to show some of the footage and keep us in the loop from the other side of the country!

Waiting for the video is painful but once we saw the amazing job Silvertip had done, it only made it that much harder to wait to show the rest of the world. But good things DO come to those who wait and you can see the results for yourself on our video or any of the other films that Silvertip have produced. This latest video has already started opening doors for us and drawing more and more fans in. 

What can Silvertip do for you?

THE UNDIVIDED WEBSITE

See the video for "7 Hours" here - http://www.silvertipfilms.co.uk/portfolio/music-videos/the-undivided2/