Ed Lovelace Investigation

For our music video, we had a talk in the hall with a former long road student.

- His name is Ed Lovelace and he attended Long Road from 2000 - 2002. He then went on to Bournemouth university to study a media related production course. He used the Imac of 2001 which was not as advanced as the macs we use, there was no Final Cut editing programme and they used an editing programme called 'cut premiere' for a short period.

- During his time at Long Road, he produced a Thriller in 2001 called 'Connection' which is the equivalent to our film opening sequence project. They were able to use copyright music as opposed to nowadays where we are only allowed to use non copyright music, unless we are granted permission from the original artist I think. His style is similar to the style of camerawork we use today, with a variety of shots etc needed in order to have an entertaining footage sequence.

- He then produced a music video in 2001 like we will for our A2 media exam coursework. The song he used was 'Infiltrator - Sleeping words'. It was a conceptual idea and he explained they did not have a clear idea what to do and were in a group of 5 so all had mixed ideas. He explained that planning was very important and that they had no set idea. However there was no lipsyncing which I found interesting as we now have to use lipsyncing in our music video to get the higher band of marks. The video I think was effective and liked the effect at the start, which is what we would like to use in our music video, where the girl was still in a town street and then people were moving really fast around her.

- Lovelace then went on to Bournemouth University, where he studied from 2003 - 2005. He liked the university as there were a huge amount of media related courses to choose from and Bournemouth is respected as one of the leading media universitys. There were a lot of good connections in terms of teachers etc and the lecturers had actually worked first hand in the industry therefore there experience helped considerably. The lessons were similar to Long Road, and the skills he learned at Long Road were very useful for later production work at Bournemouth.

- He had a 3 month placement in which he worked as a runner for six weeks or so. He said it was a good way to get into the industry for some but he personally didn't enjoy it and he didn't seem to progress in six weeks there.

- He then got a job at 'Creation' music production company, who worked with artists such as Oasis, Primal scream etc and produced their music videos. He would film the bands at the venues, such as the junction etc and cutting live videos against their performances. He made low budget videos, with a budget of £100 for roughly a year. He made a music video for The Gallows called Abandon Ship. This video was interesting as it was similar to our music video idea with clear shots of instruments etc. From watching the video it was clear he used 8 camera operators from different angles and this is important so that the music video does not get boring.

- He then got a job at Pulse films, which was linked to Creation production company. Pulse films is based in Soho, London and creates feature films, commercials etc. He is currently doing a Myspace project, in which he has different music artists around the world to promote myspace. For the process, the record label come in with a track, then the agnets give the idea to him and he listens to the song and tries to come up with a idea and pitch it.

In terms of budget, Each video he produced firstly was roughly £100 each. However prices dropped recently, as the record labels know that effective videos can be made cheaply and therefore do not need a big budget. He produced a video for the band 'Cage the elephant, called In One Ear. This had a higher budget, as it was simply 20 thousand roughly to just build the set, it was shot on 60mm film and was only a 1 day shoot. For this, he had a considerably budget of £40,000.

For the inital process of music video production, Lovelace has to use references to films etc to promote his pitch, and explained this is very important as without clear references most record companies and bands are not interested without a clear visual reference, 'its like ...' He then has to sit with the editor and help edit the video. He has 3 days to pitch, A week of planning beforehand, 3 days editing and 1 day shoot. He explained that they had to downgrade the footage as it is too big to use on editing programmes and is considerably slow, therefore they upgrade the footage again to higher quality once the editing is done.

- For his other 'Cage the elephant' video, he had a budget of £40,000 again and the song was called 'Aint no rest for the wicked'. There was some back projection used and some found footage in which they bought. He then produced a video for 'Cutting pink with knives - Laser Hannon'. This incredibly, only took 2 hours and a week of planning.

- Lovelace then moved on to produce his feature film, in New York, with a budget of £10,000, they did a tour with a singer for 2 months in the UK. The feature film was called 'Werewolves in America' and may be showing at the cambridge film festival. It is still in process and will be shown in the music festival in Texas.

Q + A with Ed Lovelace

1) Is there any film you would like to reference in a video but havent? "Yes, there are many including Eternal Sunshine film by Michel Gondry."

2) What is your policy for looking for work in the industry? "I didn't like the idea of bring a runner, I felt I wasn't progressing. My main advice would just be to start making videos now, so you have some experience and can show future employers."

3) Is there any band or singer you would like to work with? "Well, at the moment for the myspace project we may work with artists such as Jay Z and Beyonce, Jay Z would be interesting."