“I’m Gonna Stand By You” Super 8 film promo. July 2013

Filming direction and editing by Edmund Ward @ Egglab Media Ltd.

Egglab was delighted to have the opportunity to work with Morton Valence (www.mortonvalence.com), on a music promo for their track “I’m Gonna Stand By You”, taken from their 2011 album “Me & Home James”.

After becoming increasingly frustrated and disillusioned by their record label and the music business, Morton Valence decided to go it alone and rely on crowd funding for support. They sell music shares in their albums to fans as a way to generate income for further recording and touring; this also helps to give them a closer relationship with their fan-base. Being fans we decided to approach Rob and Anne of the band, suggesting we collaborate in making a short promo for them.

We decided to work in Super 8 for a number of reasons, not least because we have an embarrassing array of super 8 cameras in the office and felt they needed to be put to good use. Film (over digital media) still has the evocative edge. In shooting film one feels a direct, organic connection with the scene. Morton Valence’s sound, we felt, lent itself perfectly to this approach.

Shot over several cold winter mornings in early 2013, the film shows Rob ‘Hacker’ Jesset and Anne Gilpin (AKA Morton Valence) escaping, from another beer stained venue and out of the city in an Austin Cambridge. As they get further from the grey industry and soulless retail parks of outer London, glimmers of winter sunlight begin to emerge through the trees as they flash past heading for wilder terrain. The slow pace of the piece compliments Anne’s meditative vocal style and (we hope) offers a glimpse of the strong musical and artistic bond that Rob and Anne share.

Very little colour correction was used in post – we felt the natural tones of the Kodak stock nicely accentuated the bleakness of the outer city. We shot on Kodak Vision 3 500T, using predominantly a Canon 1014 XLS camera with an external 85B filter. The film transfer was by Ochoypico (Ochoypico.com) and lab services were Andec in Berlin (www.andecfilm.de)

We’re looking forward to more of the same with Morton Valence for an upcoming album – and a possible collaboration with the Vinyl Factory and Spit Dust.