The view of an extra - Lucy tells it how it was!
Smoke. Lot’s of smoke.And a cube. A really big fucking cube. A big cube big enough to fit lots ofsmoke and a thrash metal band. Welcome to the Evile video shoot for theirupcoming single Infected Nation off the new album by the same name. An early meet atWaterloo station finds me running the length of it to make the 9.42 am trainwith Talita, Evile’s press officer, Julie, their manager and Tom roadie to themetal massive. I just make the train as it pulls out and by the time we hitShepperton, the middle of nowhere I have pretty much woken up. I can’t complainthough, Evile have been at the studio since 8.30 am. Ouch.Studio F, where allthe magic making is happening is basically a massive empty warehouse. In themiddle, a 15 ft Perspex box has been erected, and inside that…Evile.
There are 4 huge lamps beaming down from above the cube, with a camera mounted on atrolley, and one on a crane that swings about while Evile pretend to play, soas to catch different angles from all sides of the cube. There are about adozen people working behind these cameras, the director, the assistant,runners, grips and god knows. All studiously nit picking and pouring over everydetail. Muttering amongst themselves whilst squinting into their lenses,pointing and agreeing and moving stuff, taping stuff and then squinting again. When we arrive, Ben’sdrum kit is being assembled inside the cube. He is busy gaffa taping the symbolsto deaden and muffle their sound, and a studio hand is putting dead skins onhis drums. The rest of the band, Ol, Matt and Mike are wandering aroundaimlessly plucking away on their guitars and bass, chatting and generally killingtime till they are called for again. We catch up brieflyand then go sit at the side, out of the way and get ready to watch as the guysall walk into the box before another studio hand tapes up the opening behindthem. Why? For the smoke! A smoke machine pumps in a blast of smoke and withinseconds you cannot see the band at all.
As the smoke clears, silhouettesappear, holding guitars, a bass and sitting behind an almighty drum kit. Thereare shadows of the guys all distorted from the lighting and the whole set uplooks badass mother fucking ninja sex cool! Already I can’t wait to see thefinal cut and the thing hasn’t even been made yet.There are many stopsand starts, as goes with video shoots. The band start, the filming starts andthen…cut. Something gets shuffled and it’s back to square one. Within an hourwe all know the lyrics and riffs and beat. See, this still isn’t any hardshipthough, the song rocks, and as I said, the video is proper dark. At noon we startgetting calls from extra’s who are beginning to turn up to play the role ofghostly ghouls that will eventually end up hurling themselves in to the box atthe end of the video after much zombie walking and banging around the shop.Originally, Evile hadasked their friends to do the extra work and initially had the full quota, butas it got closer and closer to the day people inevitably end up dropping outdue to other commitments and so come the morning of the shoot we were in direneed of a handful more.We ended up with therequired fifteen which included a couple of U.K thrash band Mutant, theguitarist from Juggern0rt, a whole bunch of London based friends from facebook,Tom the roadie and me.Our outfits for theday were massive black cloaks with huge hoods that had been borrowed from aHarry Potter film and black tights over our faces.
Sweet! We soon all get in toit after some initial trepidation and could be found fucking about likemonsters and zombies for about an hour, then we could be found sitting in thehallway outside the studio looking piss bored.The extra’s wereawesome, a few of them had books but for the most part they all just chilledout chatting with each other, about metal mainly and were total soldiers to thecause. No complaining or winging, fucking troopers the lot of them. We had breaked forlunch and hit the canteen, proper school dinner grub for all. So everyone ischatting away, shovelling food down their throats when it suddenly becomesapparent that a couple of the guy’s friends have managed to pick up a randomstray on the way to the studios and have no idea who he is but are quite surethat he is not entirely compus mentus. So, off I go to investigate. Ha. After some awkward silences instigatedon my part, he leaves. Turns out he just tagged along, when I asked him what hewas supposed to be doing that day he replied “drinking”. WTF. Care in thecommunity at it’s finest. Freaks and food over, it’s back to the film setdarlings.More of the samereally eh, that’s video shoots for you, lots of hanging around doing nothing,feeling a tad nervous for yourupcoming ghoul debut but equally trying not to fall into a deep staring in tospace coma. Eventually, it’s the turn of the ghouls. The Evile massive havebeen filmed from every angle and the video is in need of some ghostly figures creepingaround with a menacing manner about them.The director calls intwo, then four and then all of us, she directs us to move slowly like zombiestowards the box of Evile and then mock thump and bang on the Perspex walls butnot too hard or the whole thing will collapse! We do this a couple of times,then get to shove our heads through cling film which is imitating the Perspexwalls of the box. I got to head butt my bit of cling film but it took too longto break through and I’m pretty sure I got relegated to the bench. Ouch. Goddamnstage fright.Suffocating slowly inour tights, reminiscent of all great failed bank robbing head gear, andsweltering under the heavy cloaks, every one is sweating heavily and agreeingwe feel mildly chuffed that the poor Harry Potter cast will be having to donthese at some later date. I, at this point hadto bid my farewells and leave the shelter of Shepperton studios back to thereality and grime of London and you will never guess what I fuckingmissed….they got to ram the Perspex in! They got to charge it, ram it andcollapse it! On to the band! HA! Fuckin A. cannot wait to see this video. It isgoing to be the stuff of legends for fucking sure.
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