First off, please tell us about SCRATCH – are you an independent collective making cool videos? Who, when and why did you form?
SCRATCH started making videos together a couple of years ago. We all come from slightly different backgrounds – namely photography, drama and music and combined we found a way of working and early on developed a keen sense of what we like and how we like to work. It’s served us well so far. Collectively we are SCRATCH.
We particularly like your latest – Pylons for Eaves. How did the idea come about – did you all collaborate together on this?
The track, the track, the track! We knew Eaves wanted something on the interpretive end of things and we got a real sense of struggle from Pylons. An image of a large muddy field came to mind, a dancer expressing her inner turmoil against the external elements. It all could’ve ended up a bit pretentious but we believe if you can root a performance of that type in a real human experience it’s always engaging and hopefully moving. The final shot of the video is powerful because the scream was real (nearing hyperthermia!).
And where did you find the performer?
Sus (The dancer) is Eaves’ girlfriend and she absolutely blew us away. We have worked with the choreographer James Cousins for years. We caught him early in his career so have become good friends and he has gone on to become one of the country’s top contemporary dance choreographers. We all sat in a room a few days before the shoot and talked about what the track was about, and we threw some ideas around and let James and Sus get on with what they do best. SCRATCH did a little rolling around too, and got knee high in mud along with Sus on the shoot. We wouldn’t expect anyone to do anything we wouldn’t.
What were the main challenges of the production?
The landscape! We were shooting in some tough terrain and lugging our kit through this with a limited crew which was…..interesting! Our tiny crew all worked so hard and without a murmur of complaint. The main challenge was the first location of the promo, which is situated 100s of feet down and an hour down some dodgy paths towards the coast which were completely fog filled! We found out on the way up that Cliff Richard had shot a promo there and been driven all the way down, guess we should have got permits!!
Great cold English location – whereabouts is it?
Yeh can’t beat it! We shot it all down in Dorset, along the Jurassic Coast and in Wareham Forest. It’s a great area with so much variety in landscape and with no-one really asking any questions!
Anything else you’d like to share with us?
We know we are just stepping out, but we also know each project we work on we put our all into it – we are earning our stripes I suppose but Pylons was a great example of a collaborative effort between an open artist, a creative commissioner (Ailsa Robertson) and us lot at SCRATCH and most importantly of course Sus.
Lastly we’d like to thank Daniel Wolfe, because, you know, it couldn’t hurt!
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