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Groove Armada’s I Won’t Kneel by Anthony Dickenson

Groove Armada’s I Won’t Kneel by Anthony Dickenson

Jimmy Brown - 20th Oct 2009

<em>Anthony Dickenson on making the video for Groove Armada's I Won't Kneel</em> "I really wanted to make a strong beauty piece for this track. Becky, the singer needed to be heavily featured so the plan was to envelop her in an environment that wouldn't only produce that flattering light but also help create a progression in my somewhat obscure narrative. "I had a location in mind called Fire in Vauxhall that I had been trying to work into a treatment for a while. It's a club with a backroom called The Lightbox. This space has an arched ceiling made up of over 1000 programmable LED's. It is pretty impressive to look at but even more impressive on film. So with only a couple of days to prep I set about trying organize the programming of this light ceiling so that it felt entirely synched with the track. Dan Solis did a fantastic job of putting it all together in After Effects but due to time constraints we were still putting the finishing touches to the sequence at 4am on the day of the shoot. All part of the fun.<br/> "We arrived at the club at 7.30am and were completely freaked out by the sight of sweaty clubbers, flyer packs and a string of bouncers waiting to eject the last few stragglers from our location. Pumping techno was still echoing around the almost empty space. This was a Friday morning by the way. Anyway we got on with it and by 8 the space was completely ours.<br/><br/>"I was lucky enough to have the extremely talented Robbie Ryan on board as my DoP and after my producer Hannah had skillfully managed to acquire everything on his lighting list with our limited budget we ended up using none of it. Everything in this promo is lit by the LEDs. Me and Robbie are particularly proud of that. Ha ha. "The day ran smoothly and Becky was absolutely awesome to work with. She was very responsive to direction and very patient. This was important because we had a technical issue, which meant we could not sync the lightwall footage directly to the track. This meant I had to freestyle it a little on the LED control desk to make it seem more in sync. It was great standing in the DJ booth watching my monitor while fading in and out crazy preset lighting patterns to the track. I felt like a super star VJ! "The video is split into two sections. During the first half I wanted it to feel quite dreamy and intimate while trying to avoid revealing the space around Becky too much. In the second half I wanted her to really look like she was interacting with the lighting, almost pushing and pulling it around. The lighting patterns had to appear to be emanating from her touch. It was really important to me that I let my DOP go to town on this. Robbie really pulled out all the clever lens trickery that I think adds a whole other layer to this video. Mad props."

Anthony Dickenson on making the video for Groove Armada's I Won't Kneel

<em>Anthony Dickenson on making the video for Groove Armada's I Won't Kneel</em> "I really wanted to make a strong beauty piece for this track. Becky, the singer needed to be heavily featured so the plan was to envelop her in an environment that wouldn't only produce that flattering light but also help create a progression in my somewhat obscure narrative. "I had a location in mind called Fire in Vauxhall that I had been trying to work into a treatment for a while. It's a club with a backroom called The Lightbox. This space has an arched ceiling made up of over 1000 programmable LED's. It is pretty impressive to look at but even more impressive on film. So with only a couple of days to prep I set about trying organize the programming of this light ceiling so that it felt entirely synched with the track. Dan Solis did a fantastic job of putting it all together in After Effects but due to time constraints we were still putting the finishing touches to the sequence at 4am on the day of the shoot. All part of the fun.<br/> "We arrived at the club at 7.30am and were completely freaked out by the sight of sweaty clubbers, flyer packs and a string of bouncers waiting to eject the last few stragglers from our location. Pumping techno was still echoing around the almost empty space. This was a Friday morning by the way. Anyway we got on with it and by 8 the space was completely ours.<br/><br/>"I was lucky enough to have the extremely talented Robbie Ryan on board as my DoP and after my producer Hannah had skillfully managed to acquire everything on his lighting list with our limited budget we ended up using none of it. Everything in this promo is lit by the LEDs. Me and Robbie are particularly proud of that. Ha ha. "The day ran smoothly and Becky was absolutely awesome to work with. She was very responsive to direction and very patient. This was important because we had a technical issue, which meant we could not sync the lightwall footage directly to the track. This meant I had to freestyle it a little on the LED control desk to make it seem more in sync. It was great standing in the DJ booth watching my monitor while fading in and out crazy preset lighting patterns to the track. I felt like a super star VJ! "The video is split into two sections. During the first half I wanted it to feel quite dreamy and intimate while trying to avoid revealing the space around Becky too much. In the second half I wanted her to really look like she was interacting with the lighting, almost pushing and pulling it around. The lighting patterns had to appear to be emanating from her touch. It was really important to me that I let my DOP go to town on this. Robbie really pulled out all the clever lens trickery that I think adds a whole other layer to this video. Mad props."

"I really wanted to make a strong beauty piece for this track. Becky, the singer needed to be heavily featured so the plan was to envelop her in an environment that wouldn't only produce that flattering light but also help create a progression in my somewhat obscure narrative.

<em>Anthony Dickenson on making the video for Groove Armada's I Won't Kneel</em> "I really wanted to make a strong beauty piece for this track. Becky, the singer needed to be heavily featured so the plan was to envelop her in an environment that wouldn't only produce that flattering light but also help create a progression in my somewhat obscure narrative. "I had a location in mind called Fire in Vauxhall that I had been trying to work into a treatment for a while. It's a club with a backroom called The Lightbox. This space has an arched ceiling made up of over 1000 programmable LED's. It is pretty impressive to look at but even more impressive on film. So with only a couple of days to prep I set about trying organize the programming of this light ceiling so that it felt entirely synched with the track. Dan Solis did a fantastic job of putting it all together in After Effects but due to time constraints we were still putting the finishing touches to the sequence at 4am on the day of the shoot. All part of the fun.<br/> "We arrived at the club at 7.30am and were completely freaked out by the sight of sweaty clubbers, flyer packs and a string of bouncers waiting to eject the last few stragglers from our location. Pumping techno was still echoing around the almost empty space. This was a Friday morning by the way. Anyway we got on with it and by 8 the space was completely ours.<br/><br/>"I was lucky enough to have the extremely talented Robbie Ryan on board as my DoP and after my producer Hannah had skillfully managed to acquire everything on his lighting list with our limited budget we ended up using none of it. Everything in this promo is lit by the LEDs. Me and Robbie are particularly proud of that. Ha ha. "The day ran smoothly and Becky was absolutely awesome to work with. She was very responsive to direction and very patient. This was important because we had a technical issue, which meant we could not sync the lightwall footage directly to the track. This meant I had to freestyle it a little on the LED control desk to make it seem more in sync. It was great standing in the DJ booth watching my monitor while fading in and out crazy preset lighting patterns to the track. I felt like a super star VJ! "The video is split into two sections. During the first half I wanted it to feel quite dreamy and intimate while trying to avoid revealing the space around Becky too much. In the second half I wanted her to really look like she was interacting with the lighting, almost pushing and pulling it around. The lighting patterns had to appear to be emanating from her touch. It was really important to me that I let my DOP go to town on this. Robbie really pulled out all the clever lens trickery that I think adds a whole other layer to this video. Mad props."

"I had a location in mind called Fire in Vauxhall that I had been trying to work into a treatment for a while. It's a club with a backroom called The Lightbox. This space has an arched ceiling made up of over 1000 programmable LED's. It is pretty impressive to look at but even more impressive on film. So with only a couple of days to prep I set about trying organize the programming of this light ceiling so that it felt entirely synched with the track. Dan Solis did a fantastic job of putting it all together in After Effects but due to time constraints we were still putting the finishing touches to the sequence at 4am on the day of the shoot. All part of the fun.
"We arrived at the club at 7.30am and were completely freaked out by the sight of sweaty clubbers, flyer packs and a string of bouncers waiting to eject the last few stragglers from our location. Pumping techno was still echoing around the almost empty space. This was a Friday morning by the way. Anyway we got on with it and by 8 the space was completely ours.

"I was lucky enough to have the extremely talented Robbie Ryan on board as my DoP and after my producer Hannah had skillfully managed to acquire everything on his lighting list with our limited budget we ended up using none of it. Everything in this promo is lit by the LEDs. Me and Robbie are particularly proud of that. Ha ha.

<em>Anthony Dickenson on making the video for Groove Armada's I Won't Kneel</em> "I really wanted to make a strong beauty piece for this track. Becky, the singer needed to be heavily featured so the plan was to envelop her in an environment that wouldn't only produce that flattering light but also help create a progression in my somewhat obscure narrative. "I had a location in mind called Fire in Vauxhall that I had been trying to work into a treatment for a while. It's a club with a backroom called The Lightbox. This space has an arched ceiling made up of over 1000 programmable LED's. It is pretty impressive to look at but even more impressive on film. So with only a couple of days to prep I set about trying organize the programming of this light ceiling so that it felt entirely synched with the track. Dan Solis did a fantastic job of putting it all together in After Effects but due to time constraints we were still putting the finishing touches to the sequence at 4am on the day of the shoot. All part of the fun.<br/> "We arrived at the club at 7.30am and were completely freaked out by the sight of sweaty clubbers, flyer packs and a string of bouncers waiting to eject the last few stragglers from our location. Pumping techno was still echoing around the almost empty space. This was a Friday morning by the way. Anyway we got on with it and by 8 the space was completely ours.<br/><br/>"I was lucky enough to have the extremely talented Robbie Ryan on board as my DoP and after my producer Hannah had skillfully managed to acquire everything on his lighting list with our limited budget we ended up using none of it. Everything in this promo is lit by the LEDs. Me and Robbie are particularly proud of that. Ha ha. "The day ran smoothly and Becky was absolutely awesome to work with. She was very responsive to direction and very patient. This was important because we had a technical issue, which meant we could not sync the lightwall footage directly to the track. This meant I had to freestyle it a little on the LED control desk to make it seem more in sync. It was great standing in the DJ booth watching my monitor while fading in and out crazy preset lighting patterns to the track. I felt like a super star VJ! "The video is split into two sections. During the first half I wanted it to feel quite dreamy and intimate while trying to avoid revealing the space around Becky too much. In the second half I wanted her to really look like she was interacting with the lighting, almost pushing and pulling it around. The lighting patterns had to appear to be emanating from her touch. It was really important to me that I let my DOP go to town on this. Robbie really pulled out all the clever lens trickery that I think adds a whole other layer to this video. Mad props."

"The day ran smoothly and Becky was absolutely awesome to work with. She was very responsive to direction and very patient. This was important because we had a technical issue, which meant we could not sync the lightwall footage directly to the track. This meant I had to freestyle it a little on the LED control desk to make it seem more in sync. It was great standing in the DJ booth watching my monitor while fading in and out crazy preset lighting patterns to the track. I felt like a super star VJ!

<em>Anthony Dickenson on making the video for Groove Armada's I Won't Kneel</em> "I really wanted to make a strong beauty piece for this track. Becky, the singer needed to be heavily featured so the plan was to envelop her in an environment that wouldn't only produce that flattering light but also help create a progression in my somewhat obscure narrative. "I had a location in mind called Fire in Vauxhall that I had been trying to work into a treatment for a while. It's a club with a backroom called The Lightbox. This space has an arched ceiling made up of over 1000 programmable LED's. It is pretty impressive to look at but even more impressive on film. So with only a couple of days to prep I set about trying organize the programming of this light ceiling so that it felt entirely synched with the track. Dan Solis did a fantastic job of putting it all together in After Effects but due to time constraints we were still putting the finishing touches to the sequence at 4am on the day of the shoot. All part of the fun.<br/> "We arrived at the club at 7.30am and were completely freaked out by the sight of sweaty clubbers, flyer packs and a string of bouncers waiting to eject the last few stragglers from our location. Pumping techno was still echoing around the almost empty space. This was a Friday morning by the way. Anyway we got on with it and by 8 the space was completely ours.<br/><br/>"I was lucky enough to have the extremely talented Robbie Ryan on board as my DoP and after my producer Hannah had skillfully managed to acquire everything on his lighting list with our limited budget we ended up using none of it. Everything in this promo is lit by the LEDs. Me and Robbie are particularly proud of that. Ha ha. "The day ran smoothly and Becky was absolutely awesome to work with. She was very responsive to direction and very patient. This was important because we had a technical issue, which meant we could not sync the lightwall footage directly to the track. This meant I had to freestyle it a little on the LED control desk to make it seem more in sync. It was great standing in the DJ booth watching my monitor while fading in and out crazy preset lighting patterns to the track. I felt like a super star VJ! "The video is split into two sections. During the first half I wanted it to feel quite dreamy and intimate while trying to avoid revealing the space around Becky too much. In the second half I wanted her to really look like she was interacting with the lighting, almost pushing and pulling it around. The lighting patterns had to appear to be emanating from her touch. It was really important to me that I let my DOP go to town on this. Robbie really pulled out all the clever lens trickery that I think adds a whole other layer to this video. Mad props."

"The video is split into two sections. During the first half I wanted it to feel quite dreamy and intimate while trying to avoid revealing the space around Becky too much. In the second half I wanted her to really look like she was interacting with the lighting, almost pushing and pulling it around. The lighting patterns had to appear to be emanating from her touch. It was really important to me that I let my DOP go to town on this. Robbie really pulled out all the clever lens trickery that I think adds a whole other layer to this video. Mad props."

Watch 'Groove Armada’s I Won’t Kneel by Anthony Dickenson' here

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Jimmy Brown - 20th Oct 2009

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Credits

Production/Creative

Director
Anthony Dickenson
Producer
Hannah Chandler
Production Company

Camera

Director of Photography
Robbie Ryan

Art

Art Director
Sarah Jenneson

Editorial

Editor
Joe Randall Cutler

Grading

Colourist
Simone Grattarola

Commission

Commissioner
Rob Collins

Jimmy Brown - 20th Oct 2009

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