videoSterling Press 'Concrete Trampoline' by Sergi FiddesSergi Fiddes directs an absorbing promo for Sterling Press. The video for Concrete Trampoline follows a battered young professional who, after escaping the boot of his captors car, has to hop his way through an absurd playground of madness, whilst avoiding disgruntled rabbits and a manic photojournalist.With an ambitious one-take structure (in reverse, no less), it's a brilliant executed project with a pensive, almost haunting tone at times. Feeling like it was ripped straight from an awkward, uncanny nightmare, Fiddes creates a frantic, overwhelming atmosphere which gets stranger as time goes on. "With a very quick turnaround from concept to execution lead to the inevitable question: 'why not shoot it all in one take?'. And that's what happened - only we made it slightly harder for ourselves by shooting backwards with reverse speed in post inspired by the great Spike Jonze's The Pharcyde video, Drop."Unfortunately there was no budget to have any rehearsal day to choreograph and block the scene for camera, so we had to plan and shoot it all in the same day and with limited daylight hours, with the sun gods blessing us with some lovely early spring weather to help us get as many takes as possible. Shout out to our one-man-band camera team, DOP Joe Kennedy for operating on the Ronin 4D all day and helping me craft an action sequence that flowed from one scene to the other."Not having a playback operator was an added challenge considering we were shooting in reverse order. Having no immediate access to how the footage looked when played back in reverse resulted with us essentially shooting blind so we essentially went take after take until the cards were full and reviewed the footage with the DIT to see if we got our timings right. Very risky business but it paid off, luckily."Not only was the persistent hopping a literal approach to the song title but it was also a reference to the continuous one take of Bobby Van hopping his way through a suburban community in Small Town Girl (1953). This scene has since been reimagined in other music videos like Peter Wolf's Come As You Are and Goldfrapp's Happiness, so we're glad we're able to contribute to the growing list of tributes. However, unlike these references, we wanted to strip away any of the faux jolliness and instead inject a dirtier, grungier tone that aligns more to the spirit of the song."Shout out to the whole team for their hard work and limitless patience, our wonderful protagonist Hamish Frew who skillfully captured the horror whilst having to act backwards, and the one and only Michael Le Cirq (KidCircus) for inflicting the horror!"