I’m so proud of this film I shot for JC & The Two-Steps for Halloween 2021 and I can barely believe that it all came together so amazingly!
When the lads asked me to do a Halloween video for them I didn’t realise just what an epic adventure it would turn out to be. Filmed over several nights, we wanted to make a proper short film with loads crammed in – performance shots, spooky scenes, and scenes with nods to famous horror movies ...
This took me ages to fine-tune the edit and complete all of the visual effects (especially Alex Randles crawling out of a telly dressed as Samara from The Ring). Special mentions must go to the legendary lizard Pete Price who very graciously agreed to appear in the song, following the footsteps of horror actor Vincent Price who did the original “Thriller rap”. He was a proper professional!
An incredibly huge thanks to Marta García for acting brilliantly in this video during a late-night shoot in the middle of the woods - whilst being nine months pregnant! This’ll be one to show the grandkids ...
I can’t thank Gill Gwatkin enough for letting us film The Shining and Scream in her lovely home and for agreeing to appear as Wendy in her official acting debut ... (as far as I’m aware) ... and for doing such an amazing job.
And to Pete Gwatkin for spending quite literally all day preparing the prop door for the axe scene – which went absolutely flawlessly as he’s a marvellous engineer. You wouldn’t believe the work that he put in to it and we were terrified as we only had one chance to get the shot.
Thank you to Richie Fisher for driving around for us and picking up the prop door, Debbie Banks and Eddie Williams for their help with securing the axe for us. And Elisabeth Randles for fishing out an old Scream mask for us! Also to Jack Clarke at Camp and Furnace for letting us film in the venue and helping set up. And to Niall Carr for putting up with me barely being around for this past week as I was obsessing over the video more than Kubrick himself ...
A huge credit and well done to Sam Broadbere for his fantastic production of the song, it was a pleasure to watch him work and I didn’t even get sick of hearing it over and over again when I was editing the video (which has been known to happen). The biggest thanks have to go to the band themselves for allowing me to boss them about like Alan Sugar and for doing that long opening take of the song over and over again until we nailed it, and for the long night shoots that all certainly paid off in the end.
