SPIKY - The Making-of Paleblack [2013]

My name is Maxime Mourey, I am the director of Paleblack, the first music video of Spiky. One year and a half ago, the project started to grow from the personal artistic project of Spiky. It cames with the need, the will and the necessity to create such a piece and put motion on Spiky's universe. How is it going ? Well, the goal of this music video, in terms of lighting, is to light everything from behind. We will put a few HMI lights behind and balance the rest with some blondes. Outside we have two big sources to light up the vitrails. The vitrails will had some great colors isn't it ? Absolutely ! So, I am David and on the music video of Spiky : Paleblack, I was photo director / chief operator ...depending on the scenes. We colaborated with TSF to rent a big list of lights, they gave us a nice help so we took what we needed. We had a lot of sources at the Magic Mirror, that implies an important electric charge. Plus I had a double role : Chief operator and also in charge of the electric setup. At the beginning of the shooting we had a little jumpscare as a light burned out and it produced an electric arc hopefully it went just great. My name is Simon and I was cameraman on the project. At the Magic Mirror, during the night, we were three cameraman so we could shoot a maximum of scenes in the minimum of time. So we were playing the music and shooting with the three cameras at the same time. So during the editing we could have a lot of different footage and choose what suits best to the final editing. I am Anëlle, and I am the unit production manager of the music video "Paleblack" of Spiky. We tried to limit the number of people speaking to the musicians. So I was like a link between the director, the musicians, the technicians, and Spiky that was acting like an artistic director. What makes the big difference in this music video, are the human resources and the motivation and implication of each members of the team that really gave the final touch to the final result. What really bothered me was during the day of the shooting at the Morochita. We had this bathtub ... that could leak anytime into the electric setup. So I'm Guillaume, mostly known as Spiky, my role in the direction of Paleblack was the making of the music, the artistic direction and I was aswell in charge of the audio recording and mixing. Spiky is a universe that associate pictures and music. The pictures in this music video were pictures I had in mind for ages. Max put them in motion, and that's incredible. This universe is a bit mechanical, dark, martial, not really sad or depressed but more like something nostalgic. There are lot of words that we can put on this music or picture but the best is to get your own idea. I tried to transcribe its universe within Paleblack, with what I had in mind and little details he brought up regarding the ambiance. That allowed us to sum our ideas and visions regarding Paleblack. And that gave the essential texture of the universe we have today. What I really liked during the shooting was to have really great cameras, especially for the part at the morochita. I also liked the way the team stayed coherent : its capacity and easiness to work together and being very aware of what was happening. For the slow motions we worked in a very peculiar way because the camera can only shoot eight second in slow motion (which gives a 1:20 footage at the end). So we had to anticipate what we were doing. But it's not the traditional way to work... As soon as you are in a small team, your role is being extended so you sometimes have to help the others for the shooting. You help eachothers as much as you can. Even if you are a production assistant you have to help everyone. And that's really interesting, we are also friends so we cannot resist to help eachothers. On a technical point of view, Paleblack teached me a lot on autonomy Mainly because we had to fill up the role of many. And at the morochita I have been able to use the chinese light that give this smooth result on the skin. No contrast. She is in the bathtub on a dark background, and I wanted her lightened up, so her blue eyes could reflect with harmony. I am very happy of this decision. The recording of the music was atypical. Usually you record the music and shoot over the music. Here it was the opposite, because of the availability of the rooms, the orchestra and so on. So that means that the orchestra played the music over a metronome (broadcasted on speakers in the shooting area). Then, we synchronized the final track over the footages. We had a slightly different feeling about all of this but we managed to get it right. And it worked. It was pictures that I had in mind for a long time, things I wanted to do for ages. But it's always a matter of means. Not necessary financial, but mainly human. You really need people motivated by the project, that can live through it, that want to work on it and together. I told myself : "We will make a music video." when I understood the true human potential around me, in terms of making the pictures. To say, we had very talentuous people in this team that have this affinity about the visual that I won't necessary have. That is very interesting because I learned a lot aside of them. And it is the great irony. You are at the base of a project and finally people aren't working for you, but with you. It was a real common project, we all learned from eachothers, and kept pushing forward in this direction. I wanted to make this music video, because there were very motivated and talented people around me and that would have been a shame not to do anything. After all, everything is a pretext.