I invited some interesting little friends to my studio recently...
One of them was long and smooth.
One had eight legs and was covered in hair.
Please meet Bella the Boa.
And also meet Curly the Tarantula.
I arranged for these awesome animals along to shoot as part of a new music video I’m making for The Scaramanga Six
The Six are a band who I have made MANY videos for over the years. Both full band and respective solo projects from the band too.
I love their music and they seem to like the work I produce.
So, for this new track of theirs taken from their forthcoming album called ‘Worthless Music’ (they always have interesting introspective album titles!) I wanted to keep the brief open.
I don’t want it to have a particular structure, nor repeat shots. But I did want it to have a feeling like it’s a mish-mash of different clips from different times and places.
So with that in mind these shots fell in to place after inviting over my friend Jan, who lives locally and is an exotic animals expert.
She was very up for it and brought along three of her best creatures for us to film.
First up was vocalist/guitarist Paul, with Curly.
First we had Curly on his shoulder as he performed some lines.
Then we suggested maybe Curly could be on Paul’s hand!
He was totally up for it and happy to take whatever consequences came from having a tarantula on his flesh!
Jan was thrilled with the outcome of having a Curly on his hand.
Everything was fine and the shots look great!
Apparently, Curly is a spider that hasn’t been handled much, if at all, so it’s awesome that this experience gave her a breakthrough in holding it for herself. ❤️
We moved on to other interesting shots with the animals, which involved them on coloured backdrops.
These worked really well to tie in with other performance based shots in the video.
Got some fantastic slithering shots of Bella!
Curly also looks amazing creeping across the reflective surface!
She spun webs EVERYWHERE!
Can’t wait to get editing this all together.
Do you have experience with exotic animals?
Let me know in the comments.
They’re super interesting and I have a new found respect for owners and animals alike.
Cheers for reading, @ashtv.