Specifically, Badham’s video for Tall Stories by the sadly defunct Melburnian trio World’s End Press will be on display. “I’ve been making music videos for a little while but this is the first time I’ve gotten around to entering them in festival competitions,” he says. “This video was shown in the Portland Music Video Festival a few months ago. I’ve known World’s End Press for a while, I’ve known John [Parkinson] for ages because my band used to play with them and their manager Simon is a good friend of mine.”
Generally open to throwing ideas around with the artists he works with, Badham says the concept for the Tall Stories video came about through collaboration and an assessment of what everyone was looking for.
“It’s my preferred way of working,” he says. “A lot of musicians are very visual people and have ideas about what they want to represent their music in the world. So we just shot some ideas around about dancing in public places, and used a documentary about Pina Bausch [Pina], a choreographer from Germany, as a starting point and for inspiration.”
When it came to shooting the clip, Badham and the band took advantage of their local city streets, and employed the power of persuasion to minimise spending. “We just drove around Melbourne looking at places that we thought might be interesting,” he says. “John knows a whole bunch of dancers that we roped in for not much money. It’s a bit of a bummer because you get these talented people in to do what they’ve been training to do for their whole lives and it’s like, ‘Well we can give you one hundred bucks.’ But there’s an understanding that music videos aren’t as well funded as other productions so people are kind of willing to pull in favours.”
Filming took just three days, while the most strenuous part of the process was post-production. During the lengthy practice, Badham found a suitable distraction to stop him going stir crazy.
“Because I do a lot of after-effects, kind of menial tweaking work, I listen to a lot of audio books and podcasts,” he says. “It’s weird. I’ll watch a music video back and I’ll be thinking, ‘Oh that’s the one I did when I was listening to Tina Fey,’ or I’ll associate it with a different audio book. By the end of it you kind of need some brain bleach to get it out of your head somehow.”
SoundKILDA will be the first time Badham has viewed his work in a film theatre, an experience that’s sure to bring new life to the video. As Australia’s only dedicated music video competition, it’s a special occasion for the artists and audience members.
“It’s a good opportunity to have your video screened in a public place, up on a good screen with a great sound system. Most music videos are seen on laptops with laptop speakers or iPhones with ear buds, so it’s cool to have them viewed on a big screen in a public forum. Something about getting out of the house to watch music videos is kind of novel. I don’t think I’ve ever done it before.”
While the Tall Stories video didn’t require an extensive amount of equipment, Badham’s latest project, a Paul Dempsey clip, has been a more challenging task.
“We were shooting out in a forest with a motion control rig. It’s like a camera that’s on a dolly track that’s being controlled by a laptop, so a lot of things went wrong with that. Who would have thought that controlling a camera with a laptop out in the forest would be problematic?” Badham laughs. “We had to hire out quite a lot of fancy gear and it was a bit of a headfuck. Each clip is it’s own unique beast. The World’s End Press one was pretty lo-fi comparatively.”
This may be a major distinction, but the two clips have similar origins. “With Paul it was collaborative. I prefer working that way with the musician. There have been one or two occasions where it’s been my sole duty to come up with everything. To a certain degree it’s a bit of a stab in the dark as to what they like or what their vibe is, whereas it’s a bit more fun and you know that you’re getting to the crux of what an artist likes if you get to work with them on it. You can change how people perceive the song. If their first experience of it is seeing a video then they will have that image in their mind. There are a lot of iconic music videos that are more famous than the actual song. People can’t really talk about the song without talking about the video as well.”
BY PHOEBE ROBERTSON
