First, guitarist Andy talked us through background information about Stay Free...
"Stay Free was the first single to be released off the No Faith EP. It was recorded and released in conjunction with Rocky O’Reilly at Start Together Studio, based in Belfast. He runs Start Together Singles Club, a club which was dreamed up to focus on short-run, unusual format, non-streaming releases. The video was released on Saturday 14th December, we played a launch show in Belfast that evening with Lafaro to mark the occasion. This was also Lafaro's 10th Anniversary show which made the night even more awesome, the venue was sold out before we took to the stage so we couldn't have asked for a better night.
We asked our good friend Patrick McElwee to shoot and edit the video for us as we had worked with him on previous Hornets video releases and were always really happy with the results. He made our first live practice room video for F – Strings and also made the video for Truth off our first EP (currently available on bandcamp for free download - http://hornets.bandcamp.com/). Patrick and myself used to play in a band together so we've known each other for years. It's great getting the opportunity to work with someone who you feel completely at ease with, it makes it much easier to be open about ideas and you can be totally honest with feedback or constructive criticism of each other's ideas. Patrick plays drums in a band so he's got a really good musical ear, we knew he'd do a an great job of making sure that all the performance shots in the video are perfectly synced with audio, as well as making sure the rest of the video looks awesome.Since our last video, for Truth, was a compilation of live footage, back stage banter and drunken antics, we thought it might be a cool idea to change things up and shoot a video with a story line this time around. James (Vocals) came up with a really strong concept; he's done a great job of visually representing the lyrical content within the song. The video for Stay Free was put together on a total shoestring budget; all the clothes and props were either bought from charity shops or borrowed from friends, and venues were rented at mates rates."
Vocalist James then took us through the video concept and the filming...
"The Stay Free video was a labour of love for myself. It was a crazy idea I had pitched to the guys and at the start I knew how ridiculous it would sound unless they were willing to hear me out and have a bit of blind faith in the concept. The lyrical topic of the song is about bullying and bigger characters in society suppressing other weak and more vulnerable characters. With the type of band we are and our general outlook and sense of humour, it was obvious we were going to do it in a crass, challenging and gritty way.
There's a small bar in Belfast called The Menagerie where many local shows and alternative nights are held, the toilets in this venue happen to lend themselves perfectly to a particular scene we were looking to shoot. Upon realising I needed this particular venue for the toilet location I was ready to beg, borrow or steal to make this happen. We started shooting in my house at 9am, we got all the shots of myself getting ready and making the transition. We had the Menagerie bar from 11am-1pm; this is where the real grease began. With no breakfast in our stomachs, Steve Toner (our good friend / 'client' of the pimps) and I began drinking beer and whiskey to get somewhat lubed up for our performance. We had a great successful shoot there and stopped for lunch to demolish the biggest pulled pork baps you've ever seen.
We got back into costume and headed to the barbershop that I work in to continue the video with the girls who feature as my 'co-workers'. The girls did such a great job and were brilliant with the camera, they got straight into character. To be honest one of the people who spurred me on the most and straight off the bat thought the idea was mad but great and wanted to be involved was one our girls Kelsey Simpson, the longer haired of the two. I might have thrown the towel in if it weren't for her.The shooting of the night-time church scenes was a calculated operation riddled with giddy anxiety. We knew we had our locations for all the other scenes in the video nailed down with permission from the owners but we knew the church wouldn't be too fond of our reasons for using it… Whilst shooting these scenes we had a small audience of some of the local Romanian community who seemed to think we were filming some sort of legit movie as I sat out the side of our Ford Mondeo in full Transvestite attire, swigging a bottle of red wine..."
Bassist Craig spoke us through filming the church scene...
"The video was already getting pretty damn greasy by the end of the first day of filming but we decided we could offend a few more people before the 3 minutes was up... Coming from a place where religious divide plays such a notorious role in people's lives we thought it might be a good idea to show how these religious authorities themselves can be corrupt, and even when news stories about the lies and corruption break, people still seem to turn a blind eye.
I made a makeshift priest collar and we got together on a dark evening to try and scope out some well-lit churches and chapels. We found one close by a busy area of Belfast and parked up so Rick (Drummer / Pimp-money-master) and myself (Priest looking to vent some frustrations/make or spend some money on the side) could scope the place out. There was an ideal archway that we thought would make a good meeting point, but after standing there a few seconds a bunch of people started walking into the church for an evening service. I had to cover my fake collar at one point as the real priest walked past! We filmed that part as quickly as we possible to avoid unwanted attention; I'm not entirely up so speed on the legalities surrounding filming on holy ground dressed up as a priest, and didn't want to stick around to find out!"Andy, who plays guitar in Hornets, then spoke to us about car scenes...
"When the church scenes were all said and done we made our escape and took off to our final location, an abandoned driving range turned skate park, to shoot the final scene of the video. Whilst en-route we shot our scenes in the back of the car, our good friend Brendy, a.k.a. BeeMickSee kindly agreed to play the part of driver in the video. That's his tricked out Ford Mondeo we're cruising about in.
We slowed down the audio for Stay Free to 60% of the original speed and mimed along, then during the video editing process Patrick sped this footage up accordingly to give the effect of vocals being in time with the track at normal speed, but all other visuals are moving at nearly double time. It's a pretty cool way to achieve a really wired and intense looking visual effect, it makes me look like I'm fucked up on drugs (due to shoestring budget we couldn't afford face-melting drugs so we had to improvise)..."
Craig continued to tell us about shooting the final scene...
"We drove to an abandoned driving range outside the city to film the priest getting his money's-worth. It had just started to rain as we arrived and the location had no street lighting whatsoever, the car lights were all we had at our disposal but the scene with Andy (guitar) walking towards the car ended up looking great with the rain pouring down. We purposely cut out any detail of what the priest and the prostitute got up to so we could leave it up to the viewer's own imagination."
Back to Andy...
"The performance shots were all filmed at a later date out in our rehearsal space once all scripted shooting had been completed. This was probably the most relaxed day of shooting as we could work at our own pace and were in comfortable and familiar surroundings. We got some black sheets and nailed them into the wall to darken the place out. Patrick got us to play the song about 8 times so he could get all the angles he needed. We didn't play to a click track or have playback in the room, we just jammed the song out as we usually would at practice. There's a great video outtake somewhere of myself running headfirst into James as the lights were blinding and we both had heads down going for it!"
James then summed up the entire experience...
"This video was organised chaos and it's something we're all very proud of. It wouldn't have been possible to make the video to this standard without help from everyone involved in the process. Big shout-out to Patrick McElwee, Deirdre Simpson, Kelsey Simpson and BeeMickSee!
Next up: a Question and Answer with Patrick McElwee: the man behind the camera...
Q. Have you worked with Hornets before?
Patrick: Yeah, a couple years ago, Hornets came to me with the idea of a "live session video" for their track F-Strings. We recorded the audio live and took a couple shots of them playing the track in their old practice room. I also worked pretty tightly with them on their video for Truth which was my first HD video. It consisted mostly of live shots of the guys from 6 or 7 different shows, their house show, and a couple shots of them just messing around. The vibe of the video was to essentially show who Hornets are and what they do. It's fantastic for me to see the difference between all 3 videos we've worked on together, it really shows how much everybody's skills are improving.
Q. What where your first impressions of the concept for Stay Free video when you heard about it?
Patrick: "Wow, really?!" I remember the day when Sib phoned me saying "I've got an idea dude, I want to know if you're interested!" and he laid it out for me, I really didn't know what to say because it seemed like such an extreme idea for a video, I honestly didn't think he was gonna stick with the idea. But he did! And my main concern, pretty much until I started editing, was how we were all going to pull it off without making it look like a joke video, but after the planning, it genuinely turned out to be a great idea.
Q.How many different locations did you shoot at?
Thankfully Sib had already planned nearly all the locations before we even started shooting. The first part of the video was actually shot in Sib's house, which was great, a very relaxed way to start shooting. We shot a good chunk of the video in a local venue in Belfast (The Menagerie) and at Sib's workplace, Ashby Gents. We then went on a church hunt late one night for the footage with Craig, and found a great spot for that, including a spot for the scene where Craig and Sib are left alone. In total we had 6 locations including the practice room footage which features throughout.
Q. What was the time frame for the project?
Patrick: We spent 3 days shooting the video. I found the first shoot the most intense, time-wise. I think we were shooting for like 9 or 10 hours that day. The second and third shoots were roughly 5 hours each. A lot of the time went into planning, talking stuff over with the guys, editing, and getting everything exactly the way everyone wanted it.
Q. How did you find the overall experience?
Patrick: I always have the best times with these guys, so having the privilege of shooting a "scripted" video with them was a pleasure! Honestly, I was fairly nervous about it beforehand, it was the first time I'd shot anything scripted like this, so I was a bit stressed out before shooting. However, watching James change from James into a woman, and having Andy and Ricky arrive to the house dressed as greasy pimps definitely lightened the mood and I knew I was going to be in for a laugh. Overall, even after editing, it was the least stressed out I've ever been on a video project.
Q. Any favourite moments / funny stories from video shoot?
Patrick: So many! I think everyone really enjoyed their time during the shoot, the most memorable part for me was the scene with Toner and James in the toilets of the Menagerie: aside from the disturbing nature of it, it was ridiculously fun to shoot. Another memorable moment for me was when we were shooting Craig's "cameo" at the church, knowing there was something happening inside, and we were trying to sneak around the outside of the church to get the footage we wanted, as fast as possible. Great bunch of guys, funny as hell, and I'm proud to have been their video producer for the past few years!
Huge thanks to the guys in Hornets, Patrick, and Lauren at Inception for sorting this feature.
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