The best thing about this clip is how much fun it was to make. It was all about looking back on the summer of fun times and then bringing together all the footage and stills that would help create the vibe for the clip. Stefan Ehrenfeld was a wizkid on the computer and had some great ideas for the video. He is an awesome friend and it’s always such a buzz putting new projects together with him.
We worked really hard to bring the colours and movement into a balanced visually pleasing presentation. Just generally hoping to explore the mood of the song and stylistically get a nostalgic 70’s look without the cliched 35mm look. We split the screen up, layered motifs and cut around usable vocal snippets. The pictures from a photographic camera got used in a compressed way as smaller images usually. Then a bunch of stills were sorted by colour and theme until we had mapped out most of the song. Eventually we settled on some computer generated rain to help take advantage of the grey day of filming. We were really searching for the sunny side. We were filming in gardens, down the beach, filming the sky and gathering photos of ping pong games and holiday shin digs. I kept thinking back to the words of the song and tried to explore what they meant to me. I have spent so much time in the water and on the beach and i wanted those memories really shine.
The main photo that we splice within the multi-layering is also the cover of the album and a photo that i took myself. This picture has a sentimental value to me due to the wattle variety being a Cootamundra Wattle, Cootamundra being the town of my mother’s birth. A complete fluke of a photo,…. i had an exhibition of photography within a few months just to be able to show that one photograph. I called it ‘imagine Autumn 1977′, which is around the time when i was born. The personal feel of this song and clip is very apparent to me. So despite simple pictorial decisions we also were looking for how to capture a record of the summer and our great crew’s friendships.
The mood while filming this clip was always jovial. …Almost ‘Bonjovi’al! Stefan was encouraging me to climb a giant magnolia tree with his guitar. I was chillin’ on a mattress in the street. Then feeling homeless as people waled and drove past.We chose a fairly busy area on one of the days and while walking through traffic playing guitar and singing i started thinking about the one of the other clips, where i seemed to be dragging myself through dirt on a regular basis. It was getting bizarre and yet the images were all falling into place, while the footage got progressively more experimental. Stefan did his first ever surf shoot and filmed every wave that we caught. …The laughs were all the way through the shoot as we went for the flow. I strummed away and it looked pretty standard, so then i just started doing different sections of the song a few times over in different locations. Then in the solo section of the song….probably the mellowest part…..There were the huge solo sessions that we cut together.to prove me wrong on the stickler for detail expectation stefan suggested a huge mash-up of that guitar solo footage…that were really fun to shred out on….Also hilarious to edit.. and then there was the giant painted animal fence that had us hysterics, what with the pirate looking cat and the bird that seemed to sit right on my shoulder.. It was sunny as heck and the mirrored sunnies had to make an appearance….then it got totally overcast…….then we realised that the sound was broken on the camera! So even if we had a portable cd player, we still would not be able to line up the lip sync. I sang the song a heap more times and then we cut it all up with no sound….funny stuff.
The editing took on a life of it’s own and getting the ‘final’ cut was interesting with titles like “final cut #5″ being brandied about. To finally see it played at the launch on the big screen and get the warm response to it that i had hoped for is ace. The clip is sitting nicely with the song and i feel it is a keepsake and a snapshot of my time.We really put alot of time into making something that we hope is warm, humorous and a bit sentimental too. The crew that star in the clip are great mates and we have had alot of fun times.Then with all the coincidental footage that was shot to actually line up with song’s natural pace after we had discovered the broken camera microphone was a gift.
The video will help me remember some of those fun times and the smiles that went along with them. I hope others who watch it will get a laugh and a smile from their own memories of summer holidays or days on the beach with your friends.
Adz

No Arms…..
This was the second film-clip that Stefan Ehrenfeld and i worked on from my new album. It was a steep learning cure as our budget nearly could be described as non-existent.We experimented with the alot of effects and wanted to try and convey a strong message using simple communicative imagery.The song was always a protest at how far we have let war and conflict be accepted and thought of as a regular part of the world we live in. War needs to be abolished as way of resolving issues. War brings no resolve, only loss.
There is hope with the US and Russia holding talks to discus phasing out each of their nuclear arsenals. The rest of us hold our collective breath….and continue to ask for a world without weapons and war!