Trivium - The Wretchedness Inside Video Shoot
October 11, 2018In August I was invited to travel to Germany with Trivium to photograph their headline set at Summer Breeze. Roadrunner got in touch about shooting a new music video, for the track ‘The Wretchedness Inside’ and obviously I agreed to the shoot, I mean, who wouldn’t take on a big project with a band they’ve listened to for about 10 years? The plan was to fly out a day early and join the band in their rehearsal space, and use that as the film studio of sorts.
I had to call in a few favours for some gear to shoot the video, as I wanted more control than I could have got out of my Nikon’s so I need to say a big thank you to Tom Russell & Hannah Cole for the loaner Sony’s, and to my buddy Bart for lending me a GoPro, which came it handy at the festival for sure.
I managed to get all that crap into my backpack and set off at 4am (ew) for the airport. This is a good time to shoutout the Heathrow Express. A quality train. After my flight was 2 hours delayed I was in the air and having no fun (trust me, I don’t fit on planes very well), but before I knew it I was landing in lovely Dusseldorf, and was being picked up by André, who is an excellent human being. We drove to the rehearsal space, which is called TDA, and I sat while the band ran through their set for the festival show. It’s pretty cool having a private show. After that we ate and the guys got dressed for the video, while Boris & I decided on how we wanted the lighting set up to look.
For the sake of ease, we used the bands live lighting dollies, and moved them into a cool semi circle, changed up some of the colours and then fogged the shit out of the room. Then it was filming time. Matt didn’t want to sing as we had the show the next day, so we absolutely caned the track over the PA, while Alex bashed the shit out of his drums. We must have shot 8 full band play throughs of the song, and then individual runs for each of the guys. I feel a bit guilty for making them essentially play a full set after a full rehearsal, but you have to suffer for art so I don’t actually feel that bad at all…
The editing process wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, I think the first edit was pretty close to what the band were looking for, and we had it almost nailed down on that original edit. After a few minor tweaks and some lovely slow motion bits added in, I did a fairly simple grade that is tonally similar to my photos and sent it over. The band were happy, as were management and the label, and so the video went live on October 1st, which makes me much less miserable than normal.
Big thanks to Matt, Paolo, Corey & Alex for the trust, 5B Artist Management and Roadrunner Records for the opportunity and for being so easy to work with. Love you all.