One take wonders Duck Duck Moose and Sons caught our eye with their new Liam Frost promo, an intricately choreographed one-shot music video. Stuart’s a camera operator and Joe’s an oil painter and so like the best superhero teams, its no wonder their complementary skills are creating spectacular results (look, if there’s ever space for an X-Men analogy, you can guarantee we’ll use an X-Men analogy. It’s just how we roll). We caught up with them to find out about shooting in a theatre and why Febreeze is a director’s best friend when shooting on a budget…
Who are Duck Duck Moose? How did you meet and why did you decide to start making films together?Duck Duck Moose and Sons was formed at the beginning of this year, we are two good friends who have known each other for about five years. We come from different creative backgrounds, Joe is a visual artist who mainly concentrates on realistic oil paintings and I (Stuart) worked in television as a camera assistant/ operator. We decided that we both wanted to direct and create cool videos and that our different skill sets and backgrounds would complement each other.
Love the Liam Frost promo – what was the idea behind it and why did you decide to shoot it in a theatre?
The song is really upbeat and poppy, especially for Liam Frost – so we wanted to create something really big, fun and positive. We’d been knocking the idea of doing a single take video for the song for some time – with the action building and building towards the climax, creating a party atmosphere with dancers, balloons, party poppers etc. We were trying to find a realistic and manageable location to set the video, this being our first music video and the fact that we’re filming in rainy Manchester meant that we decided to play it safe and film indoors. The concept of a theatre was reached as it tied in with the theatrical nature of the piece. We visited a number of theatres around Greater Manchester , the Stockport Garrick was small enough to do a lap of in three minutes but large enough to provide different locations and rooms to move through.
The choreography must have been tough – how much planning/practising/ retakes did it take to get it right? (was it all really in one take?)
Joe and I spent a few days in the theatre before the shoot, working out a route – filming on our mobile phones and acting out all the parts. Because there was hardly any budget everything had to be rehearsed and filmed in one day – with only ten hours in the theatre. Everybody involved in the shoot, in front and behind the camera were there as a favour to us, so there was a great atmosphere but also a lot of pressure to get it wrapped before the theatre closed. In rehearsal we broke down the sequence into five sections and practised those parts over and over, until putting all sequences together. We managed about five takes (with many more false starts), we had our fingers crossed all day as we hadn’t bagged a single take yet. The final take, was the one we used and it was literally the last of the day and filmed an hour after we were supposed to have left the theatre. It is a genuine one-take.
Outside of filmmaking, what do you enjoy? what inspires you?
We have very similar tastes, we both love movies, music, travelling and adventures.
Joe had worked with Jose Vanders before on an art project where he got different musicians to write a soundtrack to his series of paintings. We approached Jose about doing a video. The song has a very nautical vibe and we wanted to do something quite quirky and stylised. We were looking at influences such as Wes Anderson and Michel Gondry, and decided to create a world within the video that was a homage to Life Aquatic, B-Movies and Saturday afternoon adventure stories. Once again there wasn’t a budget for the video (the costumes were returned to ASDA the next day with an iron and a bit of febreeze… sshhhh). We used an art gallery as a location, painting the walls into different zones. All of the actors and crew are our friends and worked on the shoot as a favour – making a great atmosphere on the set. The DoP Nat Bullen once again let us use all of his lights and RED camera for no charge, he’s awesome.
Where do you see yourselves in a year’s time?
We’re both moving to London later this year, and with any luck we’ll still be there in a year’s time – working full time on Duck Duck Moose & Sons creating exciting videos.
