Danny North

 

Screen shots from the Wealth video.

A while back Paul (Lone Wolf) told me he was recording a Talk Talk track to be featured alongside other TT covers by various artist's.  He asked me if Tim and I would be interested in shooting a music video for the tune.  There is literally zero budget, so Paul suggested we head to the studio with him and shoot him making the record.  That was the initial plan until Paul’s studio time clashed with my schedule. 

A few weeks later Paul sent us the track, immediately idea’s began to form for the vibe of the video, Tim and I having the same idea for location.

Spern Point is somewhere that is quite special to me. 
When I lost my father to cancer in 2007 it became a sort of pilgrimage for me to visit there alone every so often.  Just to gather my thoughts.   It’s such a beautiful and isolated spot, yet somehow connected to the world via one of the UK’s busiest ports.  I’ve shot there before many times.  Sometimes just personal work…  This was taken on a Hasselbad 500 c/m Portra 800

I shot Napoleon IIIrd for Amelia’s Magazine  and the Blue Roses album cover too… 

 

Lone Wolf’s version of Wealth is haunting, it’s full of tenderness yet it feels so isolated.  I was about to suggest we shoot there to Tim, before I could he made the suggestion too. 

Always a good sign.

We head up there on the Thursday with Lone Wolf having been the previous Tuesday just to scout filming spots and work on the treatment. 

Tim came up with the idea to blind fold Paul, from there we built our story.  Keeping that quiet for now, until at least you’ve all seen it.  It had to be simple  though, because we didn’t want to detract from Paul performance. 

 

The weather played a huge factor in our filming, it was cold, windy and raining so insanely hard. Seconds before we shot the main performance these clouds turned our sky black…

I’ve worked with Paul many many times and I know as well as he does, that his body succumbs to the cold very quickly.

We had once chance to shoot this, the rain was actually beating down to incredibly, that I thought we’d lost Paul to hyperthermia. 

Yet, he tuned into the song, singing to the playback and giving one of the most heartfelt performances I’ve ever seen.

I’m not going into the role of our actress Rebekah Whitney, because I don’t want to give anything away before you see it, but suffice to say we are very grateful to her for giving us her time for free, and also to Conor McDonnell for being the production assistant, also working for gratis.

Not too sure when the video will be released, the original schedule was for July, but I think it's been pushed back waiting on bands to submit their versions.

Always a bummer when things get pushed back, but totally understandable.  

Here’s a few iPhone shots from the day…

 

The weather was very different when we went scouting!