Director of Photography

Olly Nice

Ben Newbury helms a scintillating and breathless POV journey of a rocket-powered space woman as she flies across the globe, Iron Man-style, for Navos and Galantis's uplifting dance anthem What It Feels Like.Newbury has harnessed the latest in both drone and greenscreen technology to create this action-packed extravaganza, to make it feel like a woman really can fly - speeding through&nbsp;some glorious landscapes, both natural and urban - until she makes a truly spectacular&nbsp;crash-landing.[imgtoken data:1]&nbsp;"You know you’re on to a basic concept that will probably make a good video when each time you talk it through everyone keeps having more and more ideas for it -&nbsp;that totally happened with this," says Ben Newbury. "I have to give props to the commissioner John Hassay. He was looking for a video that: a young audience would watch to the end;&nbsp;a video that captured euphoria (the feeling not the TV show). Challenge accepted.<blockquote>Having a wild visual idea is one thing but you’re only going to hook the audience if they connect to it.</blockquote>"So the pitch was this… we experience the explosive, psychedelic journey of a spacewoman as she re-enters the atmosphere and hurtles round the surface of the earth - all from a POV inside her helmet. This hyper-colour, over-saturated, warp speed journey takes us from the edge of space, through epic mountains, forests, cities and deserts, flying through impossibly small spaces and trippy VFX wormholes, to match the euphoric feeling of the track. Before she smashes into the ground. Easy peezy."The flight itself was created with FPV drones, filmed around the world, frame matching different takes to create one sequence. Adding in the initial fall from space and trippy wormholes in VFX. Once our VFX wizards had the edit stitched together, and we had all enjoyed another Covid test, we headed to the XR stage in Garden Studios. After some careful testing, Olly Nice our cinematographer extraordinaire rigged the camera inside a space helmet, created by our fabulous art director Katie South, ready for the XR screens to play back the journey.[imgtoken data:2]"The XR screen array enabled us to perfectly match the lighting in the reflections inside the helmet and on her hands and arms, allowing our space woman to appear to look around and throw her arms out in time with the flight (as well as becoming the desert backdrop and lighting for our final shot). Our wonderful actress Poppy Christie positioned herself underneath the camera, while our SFX team (the whole rest of crew) held all manor of wind machines, spritzers, leaf blowers and smoke machines ready for launch. This made the final video pretty much a one-taker, with everyone firing smokers and squirting water at the camera."One goal I kept coming back to throughout pre-production was to make sure the video was about the emotional experience the space woman was having on her journey down to earth. Having a wild visual idea is one thing but you’re only going to hook the audience if they connect to it. If they care. It needed a human element to create that sense of jeopardy. So our solution was to shoot a plate shot of Poppy performing the flight facing the XR screen without the helmet, then composite that as a reflection into the visor in a final round of post, to allow the audience to see her performance.[imgtoken data:3]"Pulling all this off would not have been possible without the brilliant Ramy Dance and Alessia Lendrum from Common People Films. Alessia harnessed the true purpose of the internet, organising FPV drone pilots all around the world, who shot in deserts, mountains, jungles and cities to create the amazing footage that makes up the flight."Big shout out to Tom Bailey and Greg Ayala at FNDM who designed the artwork that kicked off the thought process. I also want to thank our head leaf blower op and PA - Ynez Myers, AC - Mark James, HMU - Eliza Clarke, the Drone Pilots - Luca Morandini, Fabrizio Botto, Smirnov Dmitrii Olegovich, Zakir Mohammad &amp; Jerry Chan. Then on Edit - Matthew Blacklock, Grade - Kathryn Dymmock, Sound Design - James Hall and our VFX brains - James Taylor, Darri Thorsteinsson and Shivam Solanki. As well as Andy Roberts, Amy Collins and Mariama Camara. And finally Navos and Galantis for making such a massive banger."

United Kingdom

Ben Newbury

Alessia Lendrum

Las Bandas Be Brave

Common People Films

John Hassay

Ramy Dance

Ynez Myers

Mark James

Katie South

Eliza Clarke

Matthew Blacklock

Katie Dymmock

Coffee & TV

Darri Thorsteinsson

Shivam Solanki

James Taylor

Poppy Christie

Island Records

Dance

Navos X Galantis ft YOU 'What It Feels Like' by Ben Newbury

Navos-X-Galantis-'What-It-Feels-Like-Ft-You'-by-Ben-Newbury

Tim Fox contextualises the highs and lows of a passionate relationship in a highly art directed setting for Matt Cardle.It&#39;s all about Desire,&nbsp;which is expressed through a steamy embraces between Matt and his co-star Jerry-Jane Pears that are framed in fiery red. This turns&nbsp;to purple as emotions turn to jealousy, and a box of glass represents their fracturing relationship.

Tim Fox

Sam Mildner

Monument London

Tom Mackay

Oliver Kester

Kieron Jansch

Jaoquin Blunt

Phil Penfold

Alannah Byrne

Frank Strachan/ Savannah Barthorpe

Gemma Aldous/ Rowhan Guest

Dan Peters

Monument

Jerry-jane Pears

None

Sony

Matt Cardle 'Desire' by Tim Fox

Matt Cardle - Desire (Official Video)

Underworld&#39;s classic Born Slippy, remixed to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the outfit&#39;s&nbsp;1995 album Second Toughest In The Infants, gets a new video from Michael McCool, which references a 90s look and feel, but is composed entirely of new footage, split between a bunch of lads mucking around and playing football, and a greyhound pounding along a sandy beach.So the remixed hit from Trainspotting gets a &#39;remixed video&#39;, if you like - &nbsp;which may be something of a first. Michael talks about the project on the <a href="https://www.creative-commission.com/news/re-born-slippy-start-exciting-new-trend" target="_blank">Creative Commission website</a>.

Michael McCool

Hannah Bowler

Grace Carroll

Wayne Bentley

Pete Wade

Stephen Dunn

Nicci Wilson

Angelo Mitakos

Kennedy Dawson

Mark Wood @ Universal

Creative Commission

Universal Music

Underworld 'Born Slippy (Nuxx)' by Michael Mccool

Underworld - Born slippy (Nuxx)

The joyous retro-soul sound of Si Cranstoun has inspired a suitably uplifting video for God&#39;s Of Love directed by Michael McCool - making his first all-live action promo after a couple of videos featuring animation. This involves two builders unable to stop themselves from&nbsp;busting some moves when Si comes on the radio...

Miles Lacey

Carl Noble

Sasha Bajac

Dan Moran

Smoke & Mirrors

Jack Hunter

Anders Nielsen

Nicholas Wan

Renata Chagrin

Warner Music

Si Cranstoun 'God's Of Love' by Michael McCool

Si-Cranstoun-'God's-Of-Love'-by-Michael-Mccool

Shot in a burnt-out house in London and driven by Ian Murray&#39;s excellent photography, Great Guns director Calum Macdiarmid ofers up a stylish film-noir piece to brilliantly compliment&nbsp;Chløë Black&#39;s haunting and dramatic&nbsp;27 Club.Boasting a bold and intense look throughout and brilliantly styled, Calum&#39;s promo gets increasingly darker and grittier as Chløë delivers an alluring performance...

Calum Macdiarmid

Great Guns

Boris Franchi

Ben Hsiung

Ian Murray

Chris Dowling

Jessamy Hadfield, Hazel Brill

Kate Ruth

Shukeel Murtaza

Lucy Gibson

James Demetriou

Steffan Perry

Framestore

Dugal Macdiarmid

Joe Miller

OB Management

Sony Music

Elizabeth Doonan

Chløë Black '27 Club' by Calum Macdiarmid

Chløë-Black-'27-Club'-by-Calum-Macdiarmid

New director Michael McCool, in conjunction with animator Nicos Livesey, marks his debut with this late 80s-inspired, lively, part-animated promo for London 4-piece Turbogeist to accompany their track Mermaid&rsquo;s Revenge.
&ldquo;For my first music video I really wanted to create something fun and manic, something that was an enjoyable watch&rdquo; explains Michael. &ldquo;I was also conscious of staying faithful to that raucous, punk energy that Turbogeist have in spades. I knew things couldn&rsquo;t be tame.
&ldquo;I started looking at those original MTV idents that mixed animation with live-action and for some reason got really into that early 90s/late 80s music television vibe and felt it was a sort of perfect accompaniment to Turbogeist&rsquo;s sound. There seems to be this general mania around early MTV, I don&rsquo;t think anybody really realised what their limitations were, everything was so new and fun, people were being really imaginative with their work.
&ldquo;It was also around this time when that grungy Guns&rsquo;n&#39;Roses era was in full stride and somehow those two aspects of this time really appealed to me and was something I thought I could carry through to this video&rdquo;.

Olly Nice

Director of Photography

Videos featuring Olly Nice

2022 (1)

2018 (1)

2015 (3)

2013 (1)

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