Sad news, dear diary.
The zombie scenes have hardly been used in the new ABGOTT video, for quality reasons.
But here's some footage of the shoot (finally), so you get an idea what all my whaffling in earlier articles was all about.
No way mate, you can't have my liver!
Running with scissors...the lost character
Come and get it, emo kids!
Poseurs d'enfer
Too much JD makes your eyes bleed
Go and buy the album, else...
Red candy popsticle sticks. Black Metal style.
Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste...
Not to forget, the final cut of the video itself. CAUTION: This footage is not to be viewed by minors, it contains explicit violence, nudity, gooey stuff and some things that may hurt your religious feelings. Actually it is supposed to. I don't wanna hear complaints afterwards. Black Metal meets Horror, never mind the bollocks, here's ABGOTT
What is he doing over there all the time, anyway?!
Apart from getting wasted with Swedish fetish models at the Cro Bar, playing 'inhumane characters' in Black Metal videos, bearing swords on Camden High Street (without getting arrested!) selling Abgott's merch on the road, flyering queues, de-scaling kettles at Century Media and getting frustrated over Kerrang Magazine...he actually IS doing something.
Yepo, kids. As a proof here's some selected designs and layouts i did for adverts that ran in magazines like METAL HAMMER, ROCK SOUND, BIG CHEESE, TERRORIZER, ZERO TOLERANCE and CLASSIC ROCK
Half a day, one aengus burger meal and a couple of hours of sleep later, it was
Day 2, Friday 9th February 2007
"Hi Andreas, you just missed all the blood-gore-and-machette-bonanza!"
With these words Dan Martin welcomed me in the dressing room on set, a bottle of blood in his hand. Brilliant. Bass player Tim and me soon agreed that seeing this guy working is better than watching Mythbusters. Only about the fake bleed, we were a bit suspicious.
Dan:This stuff is non-toxic, but doesn't actually taste very nice. I:Like English beer? Achilleas:Well, then I'm not sure about the "non-toxic"!
Since I didn't really have anything to do anymore, I decided to show up somewhat later, since I had to pick up Lianna at King's Cross first anyway. Basically I spent the day taking some black'n white stills of the scenery and sipping coffee to fight the omnipresent damp coldness.
All the indoor shots were being taken in a big old warehouse on the studio site. The dressing room was the only heated room and home to a big boiler and a massive coffe and milk supply, therefore this room was constantly overcrowded and thus even warmer. The rest of the warehouse was so cold that after a couple of minutes my feet started hurting, despite wearing heavy boots. The athmosphere in the store rooms was fantastic, some professional lighting in there made the place more than creepy, a puddle on the floor made you feel freezingly damp just by looking at it and in such a video you can't go wrong with seeing everybody's breath coming out in white clouds. There even were some dead rats in the corners, which actually had not been put there on purpose. I felt a bit sorry for poor Tim discovering one of them while having to lie next to it...The band had already been shooting the character scenes all day, hence I missed most of the gory parts. At some points anyhow, I couldn't be bothered to leave to warmth of the dressing room and going to Tesco on behalf of the band seemed not so bad, because it wasn't colder outside at all. Actually most of us agreed that it felt warmer outside, for some reason.
It was quite funny going to lunch at some run down place close to the studios.
Imagine a couple of builders seeing a bunch of long haired people coming in, all with corpse paint, gory make-up or just plain dirty, accopanied by some half naked beauties.
Lasagna with Salad & Chips: 3 Pounds
Coca Cola: 60 Pennies
The expression on the face of the waitress: Priceless!
A couple of exhausting hours later all the scenes were shot so could finally order some pizza for everybody and clear the warehouse before heading back to central London on the district line and going straight to bed. It's absolutely fantastic to see pors working there and I can't wait to see the finished video, which might be ready by the end of the month.
Tonight, all cast & crew are going to have drink together at the legendary Cro Bar in Soho.
For now, my feet, my back and the tendants in my forearms still hurt, but being in this video has been worth all the effort and sacrifice, methinks.
Some stills of the production should be online soonish.
WHAT A WEEK!
Well this was a busy week, I reckon.
The fun/horror part after working 3 days was the last two days, though.
We've shot the new video for 'Thy Infernal Fields' from the album "Artefacts of Madness" with the fabulous London based Avant Garde Black Metal act ABGOTT.
Pictures are still to come, be patient, but here's my version of how it happened.
Day 1, Thursday 8th Feburary 2007
Alright, I had to get up at 5 a.m. to find Camden Town covered in two inches of snow.
So much for public trannsport...
Luckily enough there was one southbound tube going , and I reached it, so I made it to the East End at exactly 7.05 a.m., only five minutes late. But not much to my surprise I was one of exactly three people belonging to cast & crew who were on time. So I spent about an hour standing in the cold at Bromley-By-Bow station, together with Alex (one of my co-zombies in the video, later) and freelance photographer Chris.
Well, trains from London's west were severely delayed, but still going, much to my surprise.
Finally, ABGOTT-mastermind Alex aka Agamoth, manager Melinda Knight, model & actress Gothness from Sweden and the third zombie Claudio arrived, so we could head on to the fantastic 3 Mills Studios close by, where we were already being eagerly awaited by producer Alec Christie and director Nathan Theys. The studios, located on an area of about sixteen acres, are famous for the production of amazing horror films like e.g. 28 Days Later. Producer Alec is already a legend himself for having done the notoriously gory videos of the highly disputed Cradle Of Filth, director Nathan got his wings in some fantastic Horror productions.
So after having had a nice Irish coffee at the bar in the lobby, to get warm, we were taken to the rooms of KAYAK Productions, where the crew was already waiting for us. Quickly the basic plan for the day was explained and serveral bags of doughnuts and croissants were devoured, before actress Gothness had her makeup done and was taken outside to do the first shots in the freshly fallen snow. And it was a lot of snow down there. I believe this woman really had to suffer a lot from the freezing conditions, but that is somethng I shall come back to later on.
In the meantime, while everybody was busy outside, French Alex, Italian Claudio and my Teutonic self started shape shifting, turning into full-blown zombies that is.
Make-Up artist Jen and special fx wizard Dan did a fantastic job, including a certain amount of latex, gel, greasy foam intestines, fake blood of course and some hilarious stories about escapologists, porredge and "real dolls" with the face of Special Agent Dana Scully, accompanied by the preparation of a dummy corpse with some fake blood and pus.
Besides Gothness being taken into the warm office and supplied with towles and hair driers, the three of us zombies were supplied with our gear, foam intestines that was for Alex and Claudio, respectively a nice piece of scaffolding pipe and a dummy corpse for me. Yay! Now guess what I had to do...
We shot our scenes in a bit less than three hours, which literally left us cold. Really.
If it wasn't for the rain coming down from the branches of the weeping willow behind me, it would have been a stroll in the park for me. More or less, maybe.
It's quite a pity nobody had a hat I could have used for a song and dance number, together with the rusty iron pipe. That would have been hilarious, I reckon. When I was just a little ghoul, I asked my mother, what will I be?...
Anyhow a hot shower and another Irish Coffe saved my day. I just missed the shooting of the scene with the corpse in the river, but at least it wasn't my fault that the bloody fishing string got loose and the dummy was carried away by the tide. There's always something, isn't it?
