Prior to the production, my coursework folder consisted of a short introduction to film noir (lasting approx. 5 minutes) produced within a group I was involved in, with me doing the filming, direction, and a couple of bit parts. The film, In This Together, seemed to be somewhere between Reservoir Dogs and The Blair Witch Project, since it featured a group of gangsters suited and booted walking through a woods (in Horley, fact fans) for a long time, before dropping a large amount of drugs off a bridge into a stream and murdering another member who 'screwed up' at the orders of The Boss (both played by me, onscreen and voiceover respectivly). End result, a 'C' grade.
Next was Issue 2 of The Land of Rape and Honey, as covered elsewhere, meaning there were 2 out of 3 pieces submitted and graded, with 5 months until the final part had to be handed in with evaluation. Since any medium could only be used once, it was up to me to decide what I was going to do. Since a radio programme was a common cop-out, and since I worked well behind the camera for Project One, and working solo for Project Two, why not combine them both?
After a few aborted ideas (the proposed video for Lard's Can God Fill Teeth? scared people away due to being too weird, for starters, and Nine Inch Nails' Art of Self Destruction Pt.1 too costly, arty, and complex), suddenly it hit me to when watching the Korn home video, Who Then Now?, and remembering some of their videos of cobbled together footage of other videos, gigs and such, that I could do the same, as long as I produced most of the content myself, and explained the presence of the footage for reasons other than filling up time.
With the idea planted, the lyrics decyphered, and some scenarios in mind, all I had to do was convince a few people to appear as Jonathan Davis, Ice Cube, as well as other people that would crop up throughout the running time. Which proved a bugger since my first choice stars dropped out of college, and too many proved reluctant. After literally begging, I enlisted my mate Michael Sienczak to play Ice Cube (if slightly conning him in the process), myself as Jonathan Davis, and a few extras were picked up along the way.
The video took on the idea of music corrupting youth, but rather than make them swear and run amok in canteens shooting people, they would rebel, revolt and take over the world. With lofty hopes for my project, filming started in and around Reigate College at the end of Feburary, with snow still nestling on the ground.
Early footage was mostly of my delivery, although there was only about a minute of footage overall, little of it usable due to the camera being dodgy. Over the next few weeks more footage would be canned when our schedules were free, with Mike taking over behind the camera when I was in front of it. It ended up with conning him and Tim Whittaker into having an on-camera fight in the street, several skateboarding kids showing off in the background, organising a moshpit in a spare room which extended to crowdsurfing(!) and the worst case of camera-shyness in world history.
With raw footage completed, the next step was to raid WTN? for footage to splice inbetween-be it from promo videos, footage of concerts or in the studio, or just larking about in front of the camera. A minor problem occurred, though. My editing had the video shorter than the original track. So it was back to the editing suite when I could (fighting off 100 or so students) to start all over again.
After spending a teacher training day in the editing suite the day before the deadline, the final product emerged, complete with use of a few outtakes, and perfectly timed with the track, so much so that it even lip-syncs in places, as well as the body movements. This may not seem like a big deal, but we didn't have the track playing on location anywhere, so had to play it in our heads, with me and my walkman trying to match it all up in the editing suite. And being reference Korn footage with my footage, as well as use it for story continuity, in the analysis a few weeks later, it got me one of the highest Media coursework grades in the college. Those fortunate enough to have seen it also agree that it is, on the whole, 'rather good'.
