Alias Empire - "Black & White'

Myself & Greg Corcoran's music video for Alias Empire's single "Black & White" was shot on Monday 25th of March in Block B, Smithfield, Dublin.

 

I'd wanted to shoot visuals into a 'space' rather than a 'surface' for quite some time and this project gave me a perfect outlet. We built custom set from curtain fabric from IKEA in an vacant space in Block B, Smithfield. I created a set of bespoke visuals the week before on the concept of Black & White, using high contrast images and strong shapes. It was strange as the pure black and white images looked so sparse on my monitor but having seen projects such as Anti-VJ's 3Destruct and Optica's Light Box I knew it 'should' work. The visuals set was then tweaked and adapted on-site as some of the graphics worked and some didn't. For example all of the particle visuals I had built became mush once they were multiplied over many layers of fabric so they were ditched whereas the strong simple shapes, which look unnervingly sparse on the monitor, translated incredibly well in the 3D space. When the first projector was being set up Robert used a grid to align it and it looked amazing. So, 30 minutes before we started shooting, I built a series of grid graphics that were then incorporated into the set. Pressure yes but really satisfying when you see it working in front of your eyes.

 

Fire up the two 12k projectors, some strobes and some lights and we had at it. The video is above, Shane Caffery shot a 'making of' video which is below along a few stills from the shoot for your viewing pleasure.

 

Inspired by Anti-VJ and Optica, check out there sites for their inspirational work.

 

Huge massive love to all the people involved, we had a really a great crew for this. 

Producer / Director: Greg Corcoran & Steve MacDevitt

Visual FX & Projections: Steve MacDevitt

Editor: Greg Corcoran
Cinematographer: JJ Rolfe
Lighting Director: Luis Poveda
Staging & Rigging: Gregg MacDonald
Projector Technician: Robert Byrne
Camera Assistant: Philip Blake

Special Thanks to:
Dave Leahy, Warrior Films
Colm Bairéad
Nick, Ben & Joe at Block T, Smithfield
Jonathan Melvin, Linders Property