A delicious box of poisoned bonbons

‘Huh, you thinks it’s funny turning rebellion into money’ -White man in Hammersmith Palais, The Clash.

Critique: thefader.com/2017/04/06/out-of-control-pepsi-ad-chemical-brothers-wiz-director-similarities-statement

Award: Winner, Bill Yukich MVPA Best editing 1999
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35mm, Colour, Running time: 4mins, 27secs
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Production co: Oil Factory Inc
Label: Virgin Records
Location: Tepito, Mexico City
Shoot date: 19th August’99

Cast: Rosario Dawson, Michel Brown, Jose Ludlow, City of Mexico Police Dept.

Screenwriter: Pierre Angelique

Exec prod: Billy Poveda
US Prod: Alison Newling
Prod man: Agnes Gardette @Milk & Honey
Commission: Carole Fairbrother, David Levine

Ist A.D. Rene Villareal
DoP: Christopher Soos
Cam asst: Andy Hallbach, Antonio Uruñuela
Gaffer: Sergio Suaste

Prod design: David Faithfull
Art director: Roberto Bonelli
Sfx: Laurencio Cordero

Costume: Kim Bowen
Make-Up: Alex Mendez

Location manager: Isaac Pineda
P.A’s: Javier Solar, Alberto Rebollo, Alejandra Rodriguez, Carlos Larios

Catering: Ana Ballesteros

Storyboard: Mark Bristol
Editor: Bill Yukich
Grade: Dave Hussey @Company 3
Post: John Myers, Jerry Spivack @Ring Of Fire
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Beautiful People: The Music Videos of cinematographer Chris Soos. By Tommy Nguyen, November 2000

On "Out of Control," also by WIZ, Soos found himself in another situation where he inadvertently became a cameraman's counterpart to the method actor. For the final sequence of the video, he picked up an infrared night camera to shoot a riot scene that unfortunately became a real riot, as the extras assembled for the shoot went head-to-head with 40 officers of Mexico City's police squad. "It was a joke, but when the extras were marching, the police created a real barricade," Soos said with noticeable excitement. "There was no bulls***, to the point where these young kids were having it out with the cops, and my friends operating the cameras were tromped on a few times. We had only a few hours of nighttime left, we couldn't rehearse."

What makes the newsroom-reality feel of the riot sequence stand out even more is its abrupt relationship with the first part of the video, a straightforward exercise of artifice. Complete with dissidents running around in revolutionary garb and federal troops in search-and-destroy mode, the setting is political turmoil in an unidentified Latin American nation, where the sun's incessant heat throws intense warm lighting on people's flesh.

The widescreen composition of the ensuing chaos, which also was shot on the 5279 color reversal stock, makes the experience forthrightly cinematic, while the lighting of actress Rosario Dawson, the sexy heroine of the revolution, took its cue from a few decades back. "In the 1970s, I always saw the film sets with these huge carbon arc (lights) behind the camera, banging into people's faces," Soos said. "It was an obvious presence of frontal lighting, and I wanted to parody that, so I was always sticking this huge 18K HMI right in front of her face." The gratuitously polished surface of her skin and the deep focus shots (along with the quick close-ups of an effervescing soft drink) give clues to the music video's product-selling artistry until the grand narrative twist comes flying at you in the form of a whirling cola bottle. It turns out the first part of the video is just a commercial, and the revolution doesn't take place in the streets but in the people's consumer habits. The video's letterbox vision then suddenly collapses to fit the dimensions of a television set, where we eventually see the pop-culture presence of the Chemical Brothers smack in the middle of the consumer box. But, as the ending indicates, there really is a people's revolution in the streets, and they're smashing the soda vending machines.

All this reflexiveness is pretty heady for a music video, but it's no surprise that it comes from WIZ., the Oil Factory director known for pushing the intellectual imperative of the art form, from the political eroticism of female dominion in Mel C's animated video "Word Up" to the arrestingly earnest romanticism of communist infiltration in Leftfield's "Dusted," shot by Daniel Landin. "WIZ is very serious about his creative connection with the project and whom he chooses to work with," Soos said. Though the project was extensively storyboarded by WIZ, limited prep time meant rehearsals of the narrative sequences took place in a hotel room a day or two before shooting started. Coupled with the unexpected occurrence of the riot, it impressed Soos that the more-spontaneous elements of the production ended up working so well. "WIZ. rides an interesting tightrope between being this incredibly focused, work-ethic professional, and being a real human being, which is sort of about being unfocused."

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35mm
Colour
Running time: 3min 54secs
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'The English country gentleman galloping after a fox is the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable' -Oscar Wilde

CRITIQUE:
obtusity.blogspot.com/2007/04/fear-of-hood-dizzee-rascal-sirens.html

videos.antville.org/stories/1606090/

theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2009/dec/23/best-music-videos-noughties

This video was chosen for ‘Power To The People: British Music Videos 1966 – 2016’ DVD boxset
MOBO nomination best video 2007
UK Music Video Awards nomination best urban 2008

Digital media
Black & White
Running time: 5 mins, 18secs
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Strait Street known to British servicemen as 'the gut' was Malta's notorious red light district up until the early 1970's. A choice destination for drunken sailors when the street sprung into life in the long hours of darkness. Barmaids would lean on doorways touting for business, musicians, entertainers and prostitutes would spill from every bar, decorative lights would be switched on and the tawdriness of the environment was masked by a sense of liberated jollity.
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Producer: Andrew Whiston
Production Company: A+ Academy Films
Commissioner: Zoe Wolff

Cast: Ira Melkonyan with Lisa Elle, Bobby Waterson, Stephen Ingham, Andy Bang, Harry Bohay-Nowell

DoP: Ali Tollervey
Camera Operators: Adrian Abela, Bettina Hutsheck, Martin Bonnici

Location: Valletta, Malta
Shoot: August 2012

Soundtrack: 'Anna Minor' by Dark Horses

Research: Emma Mattei, Sandra Banthorpe
Editor & Sound Design: Leila Sarraf @ Trim
TK: Tom Russell @ Prime Focus

Dedication: Margaret

promonews.tv/videos/2012/12/06/strait-street-featuring-dark-horses-wiz/16007

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35mm & heat sensitive
Colour & Black & white
Aspect ratio 1.5:1
Running time: 6mins
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'The heat sensitive camera as used by firefighters to see objects through smoke, works by recording temperature as light. Hot objects are read as white and cold- black, with a gray scale of the temperatures in between.'

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Cast:
Robert Del Naja
Natasha Wightman
Grant Marshall
Andrew Vowles

Body doubles:
Tabitha Denholm
Louis Hyde
Pierre Angelique

Screenwriter: Pierre Angeligue.

Commissioner: Carol Burton Fairbrother.
Producer: Niki Amos for Oil Factory Films.
Production manager: Lou Whiston.
Ist A.D: Dave Moor

Cinematography: Simon Chaudoir.
Production Designer: Annie Gregson.
Costume design: Paul Frecker.
Make-up: Michelle Bayliss, Lisa Johnson.
Editor: Struan Clay @ Final Cut.
Colourist: Tareq Kubaisi @VTR.
Set photographer: Jason Brooks

C Stage, Bow Studio, London E15, United Kingdom.

Shoot dates: 26th & 27th August 1998.

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35mm anamorphic
Colour
Aspect ratio 2.35:1
Running time: 4min 52secs
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‘Posh cunts telling thick cunts to kill poor cunts’ -Gregory Burke
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CRITIQUE: videos.antville.org/stories/1438492/

Q Awards nomination best video 2006
NME nomination best video 2006
UK Music Video awards nomination best rock video 2007
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DULCE ET DECORUM EST by Wilfred Owen 18 March 1893 - 4 November 1918

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!
An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out & stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes & thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.*

*"It is sweet & meet (fitting) to die for one's country."

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‘Empire making of part 1: youtube.com/watch?v=cXvkH5ruw40&list=RDcXvkH5ruw40&start_radio=1&t=60

Empire part 2: youtube.com/watch?v=1DMLHv9veSI

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35mm
Colour
Running time: 4min 50secs

This video was chosen for ‘Power To The People: British Music Videos 1966 – 2016’ DVD boxset

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Production company: Oil Factory Films
Label: A&M Records
Studio: Stage 6b, Three Mills, London, E3
Shoot dates: 21Ist, 22nd September '95
Cast: Andrew J Cairns, Cani Gonzalez
Producer: Kim Mnguni
Prod manager: Lou Whiston, P.A. Sue Lloyd
Commissioner: Robin Dean
Screenwriter: Pierre Angelique
Ist A.D. Barry Wasserman
DoP: Daniel Landin
Gaffer: Barry Miller, Sparks: Matthew Moffat, Paul Sharp, Kevin Robertson
Focus: Ray Coates, Loader: Jon Mitchell
Grip: Johnny Dunne, Coral crane: Fred Harris
Production designer: Iain Bailey
Costume design: Jane Howe
Choreographer: Les Childs
Make-Up: Sacha Souter
Stills: Simone White, Runners: James Dowd, Scott Williams, Russell Reid
Catering: Lynda, The Catering Company
Colourist: Tareq Kubaisi @ VTR
Editor: Struan Clay @ Final Cut