To Kill a King Video 3/4: ‘Family’

Having drip fed the last two TKAK videos at a steady pace, it was inevitable that episode three ‘Family’ was just around the corner.  This ambitious one-shot (no cuts) was achieved after meticulous rehearsals, the painstaking concealment of all camera and lighting equipment and the removal or re-positioning of any giveaway reflective surfaces – in other words, this was no walk in the park to make… but well worth the extra head scratching and another late night of filming.  One thing I have learned in this game – a film crew will do most things for a constant supply of Seabrook Crisps and Haribo Tangfastics on tap.

Interestingly, although this video was shot, on location, in a real Yorkshire pub, the room we used was disused and required a full set dress. My art department was charged with stocking the bar snacks, putting up pub paraphernalia, writing ‘special offers’ and de-branding any drinks on show.  All the half empty glasses were deliberately placed, the peanut packets considered and the newspapers opened at just the right page for the look. A particular highlight of the location dressing was recreating alcoholic drinks using things the actors and extras were able to gulp down all day without falling down drunk. Lots of the lager on set was non-alcoholic, with the exception of that of a few of the local regulars who’d been recruited from the active pub room across the corridor. They carried on with their usual tipple. I did encounter one or two funny looks in Tesco, early doors, when buying what appeared to be enough beer to drown a whale. What I had actually stocked up on was three kinds of booze-free lager for set and some muesli bars to keep me plodding on through the day…. and night.

Throughout the video, one of the local extras, an old boy who’d been quietly supping pints since lunchtime, had unwittingly picked up a meaty slug on his flat cap. Over a course of many hours the slug wove a mesh of silvery trails all over the cap with none of our cast or crew (or his friends) being brave enough to tell him.  Maybe it was his pet slug. We’ll never know.

Pre-order the TKAK ‘My Crooked Saint’ E.P. at iTunes!

To Kill A King: ‘My Crooked Saint’ Behind The Scenes

My Crooked Saint E.P. Artwork

I’m proud to announce my latest cluster of art direction and production design! Four music videos as directed by Jack King with Mikolaj Jaroszewicz as director of photography in association with Virgin Records and Run Productions.

At the dawn of the project I knew that I was onto a winner when a small section of the props list looked something like this:

As many fairy lights as you can carry, vintage wheelbarrow, guns… lots of guns, bunting, WW2 militaria, colourful placards, solid silver hip flask, union flags-a-plenty, various debris, alcohol free booze, disco ball, rolling pin, crochet blanket, wild flowers and a two salad sandwiches.

The only real concern was… How on God’s green Earth could you achieve four beautifully cinematic music videos, worthy of their respective tracks, with but a week to shoot the lot? It transpires that all you need is a healthy dollop of imagination, a chemically imbalanced crew of illustrious artisans and a feck-load of Haribo ‘Tangfasics’.

‘To Kill a King’ are set to release their debut E.P. ‘My Crooked Saint’ on October, 16 2011. The E.P. will include four new tracks: ‘Bloody Shirt’, ‘We Used To Protest/Gamble’, ‘Family’ and ‘ Wrecking Crew’. Each track will be accompanied by a music video. Each of the four music videos is a chapter of short film that explores the relationships within a small community.

Keep abreast of all forthcoming TKAK updates by ‘Liking’ the TKAK Facebook page and order the ‘My Crooked Saint’ E.P. on iTunes.

As a treat to all ‘TKAK’ fans, here are some behind the scenes shots from our week on Brafferton Arbour, Bradford:

Bloody Shirt, location two

Battle scene preparations

Bespoke placards featuring the name of the track

‘Superhuman effort is not worth a damn unless it achieves results’ – Ernest Shackleton, Polar Explorer.

Shhh! Don’t Mention the Riots!

A Blaze of Emotion

Over the coming days and weeks England’s politicians will undoubtedly be racking their privileged brains as to the reasons behind the recent spate of civil unrest… sat on deckchairs, drinking ‘Pimm’s', surrounded by clean moats and duck houses. On the other side of the tracks, frustrated pre-pubescent children are feeling the full force of the British criminal justice system for nicking the iPads that our capitalist system tells them they really, really, ought to have in order to be decent, integrated members of society. Phew, I’m pleased I unwittingly voted for that government!

Do we really need to exhume the fictional ‘Lieutenant Columbo’ to find out what the kids’ beef is? I’m no criminal psychologist but surely they’re miffed at being poor, having a social ladder with greased rungs, few job prospects, prohibitively extortionate university fees and domestic fuel bills that lead them to sleep through the winter in their coats? These kids are under enormous pressure to hit unrealistic social targets. Popular music says you must drive a Bentley, drip with ‘bling’ and live in an ‘MTV crib’ to bag yourself a ‘Pussycat Doll’ (or whoever the latest pin-up may be) – no problem in this era of record unemployment, recession and with role model politicians taking whatever they fancy and charging it back to the taxpayer. I wonder what the ratio of thieving politicians to prosecution is compared with looting kids to prosecutions?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone anyone looting and pillaging in a democratic state. I mean, tell the Syrians or Libyans that your democratically elected politicians don’t butter your parsnips. I’d be the first to issue a well directed clip round the ear to any looters within range of one, but to say they’re just rampaging for shits and giggles is irresponsibly naive. The rioters would have been better placed to conduct a peaceful protest using their oodles of passion and undoubted social media skills.  Poignant exemplification of recent people power are the Tory U-turns over selling off the nation’s forests, not to mention the hugely unpopular NHS reforms – both proposals were shot down by overwhelming public outcry manifesting in powerful internet petitions courtesy of ’38 Degrees’. When peaceful protest does so obviously work, it’s tragic that six people have died in order that a portion of youth vent some steam. Sadly, those bereft families won’t get their loved ones back and to make matters worse, there’s no real agreement as to why the riots happened in the first place. If the powers that be just bang kids up left, right and centre and close their ears to the underlying issues, the deaths will seem even more pointless and tragic then they already are. Let’s be honest, the government won’t even listen to and support the police by calling off the imminent budget cuts to the force – and this is after the police performed the thankless task of cleaning up the streets amidst the riots. Maybe the banged up kids should teach the police how to start a contagious Facebook campaign and the police could teach them some friggin’ manners.

The Rise and Fall of the Drop Crotch Trouser

Sought After Fashion for A/W 2011-2012

Drop crotch trousers do exactly what they say on the tin… they are trousers with a lower than average crotch seam.  What the tin neglects to mention is that they are fast becoming a fashion phenomenon that’s taking the high street by storm. Not that I’m the lovechild of Gok Wan and Kate Moss or anything, but I personally own four pairs. One pair of All Saints ‘Yawa Short Kick’ denims in a dark blue wash, two pairs of ASOS ‘Drop Crotch Twill Chinos’ and a pair of black ASOS ‘Jersey Wraps’ (that are currently winging their way over to me with free next day delivery courtesy of an ASOS Premier Account.. Woohoo!).

So why are drop crotch trousers so popular? I suspect it’s because, unlike traditional skinny jeans, the thighs are a more generous cut to cater for your average bloke who plays a bit of Sunday league footy and who isn’t wholly unfamiliar with the takeaway pizza scene. Alas, skinny jeans are strictly the attire of the stereotypical indie music scenester with the legs of a marathon running Kenyan. I’ve tried skinny jeans and, to be frank, I look like a burst sausage with the male equivalent of a camel toe. Not pretty. Drop crotch trousers and chinos allow liberal thigh space, yet still nip in at the ankle to suit on-trend plimsolls, hightop trainers, flip flops and industrial looking leather boots. Really, the drop crotch movement is a long overdue compromise between wide legged chav chic and discriminatory skinny jeans that squeeze the feck out of seventy-five percent of normal blokes. Hallelujah!

As a consequence of donning my collection of drop crotch trousers and chinos, I have observed many pros and cons that I’m compelled to share with any blog reading drop crotch virgins out there. When perusing the high street in search of your drop crotch dream, you’ll most likely pay no thought to the everyday task of negotiating stairs… big mistake! Wearing your dream drop crotch pants will certainly mark the end of bounding up stairs two treads at a time. Even in the heat of passion you will be forced to tentatively crab your way to the bedroom in an elderly, white knuckle, bannister holding, fashion… while your partner looks on like an angsty, minimum wage, care worker faced with the prospect of cleaning out a soiled Nissan ‘Micra’. Other less obvious downsides to the drop crotch are things like never being able to high kick out a ceiling light to cloak your retreat, in a battle to the death, against a room filled with bloodthirsty ninjas. On the flip side of the same coin, the very same ninjas will struggle to cheap shot you in the plums, as the whereabouts of your two veg’ will have become more ambiguous thanks to the mid-thigh crotch level – Granted both scenarios are, at best, unlikely, it’s worth noting that the point about restricted mobility is extremely valid.

So ‘Jerry’s final thought’ for today is: look cool by wearing drop crotch trousers and chinos, live exclusively in bungalows and carry small firearms to cope with the potential threat of ninjas.

Make Something Beautiful

Aiming For 'The Good Life' Before and After Shots.

I don’t know if it’s a curse or a blessing to feel like you’ve to make everything look and function as well as possible. One thing’s for sure, seeing the potential in a thing is a genuine gift that I’m forever grateful for (although not necessarily in the case of selecting one or two of my ex-girlfriends). My earliest recollection of seeing something most would describe as ‘a heap of junk’ and being fixated with its potential, was probably when I clapped eyes on a very early 1980′s BMX laid rotting in one crumby secondhand shop or another in the darkest depths of Scunthorpe. Despite being knee-high to a grasshopper, having no understanding of BMX mechanics or a grasp of just how detrimental to the infrastructure the, with hindsight, terminal rust factor was, she became my project.

Skipping on a few hundred years to 2009 when viewing my current home with an estate agent, I must have had the very same rose tinted glasses on as when I bought ‘Old Rusty’ the BMX. This particular property had been left on the shelf in the estate agency for a good few years.  Where most saw a dilapidated money pit with a pretty much full spectrum of ailments, I saw some kind of shiny fabled chocolate box house that just needed a bit of elbow grease. Sure enough, after sleeping in my coat for the first winter with decayed single glazing, a gate for a back door, no insulation, no central heating and an energy efficiency rating of one out of one-hundred… sustaining multiple injuries… and a steep learning curve later… the house is beginning to look pretty.

I don’t know why my imagination allows me to see the good in things. Perhaps in 1501 when Michelangelo looked up at his gargantuan lump of off-white Carrara marble he saw his statue of David? Perhaps he didn’t have a clue how it would look, knew it wouldn’t be completed until 1504, so knocked up a decent playlist on his iPod and cracked on regardless. I’d like to think so. I suspect that if such a wedge of marble found its way to being ‘free to a good home’ on a street corner in this day and age, it’s likely that the vast majority would jog on, students would most probably plaster gig posters up one side or use it as a windbreak to smoke rollies behind and someone from the council would whack a clamp on it. Let’s all hope that in the future one or two people will still see a David in rocks.

Design Your Way Out of Anything

Avoiding finger burns.

A good creative should be able to design their way out of anything. Indeed it was Plato’s belief that : ‘Necessity is the mother of all invention’. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re a one armed man, hanging by your fingernails to a twig midway down a rocky cliff face and your nose begins to itch, you’re obviously goosed. If, thankfully, you’re not in the aforementioned and somewhat unlikely predicament, but you are faced with burning your fingers because, in the name of toasting marshmallows, your skewers just won’t cut it, all is not lost. As you can see from this highly revealing snapshot (above), with a little creative thinking, things needn’t be so bleak .

As a child I’d watch ‘The A-Team’.  I’d regularly marvel at the point at which, inevitably, the crime fighting team would find themselves locked up by baddies in an abandoned warehouse, before breaking out with the help of the wondrous vehicle they’d managed to forge form nothing more than the junk that lay strewn around their former prison. I suppose those kinds of fictional challenges contributed heavily towards my formative years as a fledgling creative.

I’m not for a minute claiming that we should all be looking to reduce the world’s carbon dioxide emissions using the contents of your wastepaper bin, a length of double-sided sticky tape and a medium apple. What I am attempting to invoke is the motivation to look at problems as challenges that should be as tempting to solve as a Sudoku puzzle on the back page of a daily newspaper.

Paul Mansley in a Nutshell

Unwittingly screen-grabbed on Skype.

Here it is, the ice breaker, the inaugural paulmansley.com blog posting.  I suppose I’d better introduce myself to those who don’t know me.  I’m a moderately eccentric, yet hugely practical, creative type.  I heart making interesting things from music videos to television adverts and short films.  Other passions of mine include ice creams with a greater dairy fat to sugar ratio, lounge pants and pointed shoes.  In some ways this charming webcam screen-grab sums me up….  I’ve just been playing five-a-side so my hair is partially tied up, I’ve not shaved for a little over a fortnight, I’m wearing my, comically oversize, prescription glasses to help my tired eyes navigate their way through the perils of blog writing deep into the night…. oh yes and pulling the face of a total loon.  I expect that if, God forbid, my life ever degenerates into a miserable existence driven by crime, this will be the photo the Daily Mail will use as the accompaniment to their cover story.  But let’s hope that instead of a life of robbing tuppenny arcade machines at the end of the Cleethorpes Pier and being chased away by machete wielding gypsies, I’ll manage to bring bread to the table living the life of a creative – fingers crossed.