Gregg has worked with a number of different filmmakers during his career as a musician, so far I’ve collaborated with him on three, including his latest track ‘Waiting for You’.
Usually the process goes something like this: Gregg plays the song. We discuss the themes. I go away and retch up a messy puddle of ideas. I go through the clutter and sort out which ideas are A.) Do-able, B.) Relevant to the song or C.) Interesting/absurd enough to grab somebody’s attention.
For ‘Slow Me Down’ we decided to strip it back and do something simple; moodily lit shots of a self-reflecting Gregg aimlessly wandering the streets of midnight Sheffield like a friendlier, less tormented Travis Bickle.
Whilst this sober approach worked for ‘Slow Me Down’, with ‘Waiting for You’ I felt there was more room to be experimental. I recently had the pleasure of watching ‘Loving Vincent’, an incredibly made film in which every frame was a hand-painted homage to the works of Vincent Van Gogh. Inspired by this film’s stunning visuals, I wanted to apply a similar effect to sequences within ‘Waiting for You’, believing it was warranted for the mood of the song. The effect would transform footage I had shot of Gregg wandering a baron wilderness into animated oil paintings.
Now, ‘Loving Vincent’ took six years to make – I had a week… so I cheated. I applied an effect which would make each frame simply appear like an oil painting as opposed to actually being one.
So whilst like ‘Slow Me Down’, ‘Waiting for You’ serves as a solid showcase for Gregg’s abilities as a musician, this video has a healthy dash of oddness sprinkled atop of it. Perhaps with the next video, a healthy dash will become a gluttonous full serving, leaving Gregg with a Daliesque nightmare.
