New music video I directed/shot | Paradise Lost

I’m proud to be able to share the hard work I have put in to creating this brand new music video.

I have once again worked with UK metal-goth-doom pioneers Paradise Lost on a brand new music video.

The video was released just yesterday as part of their much anticipated album launch.

The album is called ‘Obsidian’ and the first track is called Darker Thoughts. This is the track I made the video for.

It’s had 108,000 views in 24 hours on YouTube and the reception/ comments from fans has been the most positive of any video I’ve made for the band to date (I’ve made four so far!)

See the video here in its full 4K glory.

It was an absolute pleasure to make this with/for the band, but equally it was an exercise in creativity, resourcefulness and problem solving.
I absolutely love this track, ever since the first listen right through all of the filming and edits. Which is unusual - I normally get sick of the songs I work with.
But it still gets me how powerful this song is.

Sadly, Covid-19 derailed our plans to shoot an epic full band performance - which was the plan - however, our saving grace was having the intro section/vocal closeups with Nick already filmed.

From there, I needed to get really creative in directing the bigger picture and tone of the song through visuals we already had, along with an addition of loads of shots that I went out to specifically film (on my own) at various isolated locations, like local forests, woods and moors.
See my last post about filming on the moors

The ink effects throughout the video were created and filmed with real ink in my studio/office. I experimented with various lighting setups, ink colours and ‘dropping’ styles.
See my previous post about my ink exploits!

In the end I set up the same thing on three different occasions. Sadly it’s difficult to know what ink drops work the best without seeing them in the edit. It turns out I needed to give it a few more runs to nail the good stuff, which ended up in the final edit.

I wanted the video to essentially explore two visual worlds, as a kind of reflection of the singers (Nick Holmes) perspective.
The first backdrop being the silhouetted moorland walk; warm, mysterious, melancholic, baron and calm. Nick performs his vocals in a casual way, striding between huge chunks of rock and weather worn bare tree branches towards the forest.

The intro scene ends with a swift transition to black where we enter the ‘inner’ world, where ink - reminiscent of the famous Rorschach psychological test - flows erratically and spontaneously as this inner voice growls, consuming the frame unapologetically.

The last main setup seen throughout the video is the over-the-shoulder, non confrontational vocal performance shots of Nick - which acts as a middle ground between these two locations.

I incorporated the silhouetted imagery of birds throughout the ink blot sections. The subtly fly in and amongst. I filmed them myself whilst on the moors on my GH5 with my 70-200 lens. I got some cracking shots, I might upload them another time :)

This is not entirely the video I envisioned making when started the project, but I’m still really happy with this alternative feel and vision that was created.

The production went well, the shoots were fairly straight forward - as I knew exactly what I wanted - and although the edits were complex, long (with many MANY layers and effects) and headache inducing; I feel like I got the best results I could have on the time and resources I had.

I hope me shining a light on some things video related might be of interest to some :)

For those interested in this titanic goth/metal/doom band, you can hear their new album ‘Obsidian’ in full, right now, on your favourite streaming platform.

It’s well worth a listen.
Contender for album of the year of you ask me :)

Cheers for reading.
@ashtv