One week and it’s a wrap
FILM director Anna Duckworth never dreamed the first music video she would make would be for the winner of the phenomenally popular reality show The X Factor.
Ms Duckworth and producer Alix Whittaker from up-and-coming film company Candlelit Pictures were delighted to receive a surprise invitation from Sony Music to conceive a video for winning songstress Jackie Thomas.
‘‘I woke up one day and Alix was like ‘what are you doing today’ and I was like ‘oh I don’t know’, and she said ‘cool, you’re pitching to Sony at 4pm’,’’ Ms Duckworth says.
The Mt Albert resident has shot several short films but this is the first time she has turned her hand to music videos.
However, the Sony executives liked the young director’s idea so much they hired the team to film the video for It’s Worth It.
They had just one week to pull it off.
Other Candlelit Pictures directors have made music videos, including for rising Kiwi rapper Randa, but Ms Whittaker says it was a unique challenge to shoot so quickly.
‘‘We have never made a music video in one week. That was insane. Usually you get about a month.
‘‘Everyone was all hands on deck for an entire week, everyone put everything into it and we hardly slept, it was crazy.’’
To help accommodate for the short time frame the concept was kept simple.
The songstress was shot in a sea of lightbulbs that move and pulse with the music.
Thematically the track addresses the journey of a relationship struggling through hard times, so Ms Duckworth loved the idea of keeping the singer moving and walking through the whole video.
Filming was all done in one shot, allowing little room for error, but the bought her A-game.
‘‘I didn’t really know the way Jackie was going to perform. I was thinking in my head about how I was going to coach her to get this great performance and then off the bat she nailed it,’’ Ms Duckworth says.
‘‘Looking straight into the barrel of the camera is really difficult for a lot of people, and a lot of people can’t really emote that well to a box, but she was great at it.’’
Ms Thomas says the video is probably not what people would expect from her.
‘‘I think they wanted something really elaborate but I like it because it’s more about the song and how I perform the song.’’
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