Panic Cell
away from here '05
Dop Robin Brigham
Telecine Dave Ludlum at Framestore

Panic Cell decided to re-release Away From Here as a follow up to Thousand Words. As the band's look had changed they needed a new video for this re-mixed version. Set in a club during Panic Cell's performance, the narrative follows a girl as she meets her apparent assailant.

We had an industrial niteclub location in mind when writing the script but decided to recreate the club in a studio which was logistically beneficial and kept costs down.

We hired the loading bay at Black Island Studios. The set for the narrative was built adjacent to the bay where the band were performing, enabling crew to jump between sets so the band's performance could be shot while the actors were going through make up changes.

We achieved the look for the club by using long lenses and low key lighting, shooting on an Arri 435 from Panavision so we could easily adjust the shutter angle between shots.

Robin Brigham had lit the original version and has a great gift for getting creative under pressure, managing to keep up with our tight shooting schedule.

Our two production dynamos Carolyn and Isy sourced actors Jennifer Glyn and Danny George who's parts were pre-blocked and rehearsed enabling efficient shooting. The whole shoot was storyboarded and planned down to the last detail in order to accommodate the amount of set ups.

We used Panic Cell's fans as extras to add to the realism of the club. A free bar as part of the set was unfortunately derogatory to their behaviour but despite alcohol induced issues the extras did a great job and we shot as planned with long lenses to create the illusion of a larger crowd.   For practical reasons all the scenes with the extras were shot first.

The flashbacks of Jennifer getting ready were filmed in a house in Wimbledon. Danny wasn't available so Yan body doubled during the exterior attack scenes which were shot in the back garden. Finally we dragged poor shivering Jennifer into a nearby alley to shoot her post attack scenes, covering her in a blanket between takes. Robin lit this sequence with one sungun maintaining the high contrast look of the club interiors, shooting everything wide open on the lens which gave us a very shallow depth of field.

Dave at Framestore provided us with another superb grade and once we finished the cut, the final stage was the subtle CG sequence as Jen turns into a vampire. Chris Shaw created a rough transition, tracking vampire eyes and teeth onto Jen's face. He had planned to do a more detailed version but the first one worked really well as the sequence only lasts for a second, so we used this in the final cut.

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