The Xcerts: Feels Like Falling In Love
At RIOT we’ve been making a push into doing more of what we truly love, the wonderful music video, created in its original form as a means for The Beatles to appear on two coasts at the same time. The music video has changed a lot since then, becoming a visual format that offers as much creative freedom as is available, only being limited by imagination, and something we will be heavily pursuing this year.
In May, we jumped on a plane and headed back to Blighty. After a lovely weekend spent with family and friends in Wales, I drove down to Brighton to meet the guys from The Xcerts and put the final touches on the preparation for the production of the music video of the debut single from their new album, titled “Feels Like Falling In Love.” This wasn’t the beginning of our work on this single or album though. We began by re-vamping The Xcerts brand, starting with their logo. While we did offer exploration of taking it in a completely new direction, our final logo design for the guys ended up being a progression of their existing logo. We found them a nice place to nestle the word “the,” offered a beautiful typeface and some simple yet calculated cut-outs that make certain portions of the logo feel layered and three-dimensional (check out the logo in the pack shot which is attached below).
The music video was directed by our creative agency founder Chris “MUG5” Maguire and was shot at The Brighton Studios in Brighton with an absolute banger of a production team, the full details of which can be seen below. The video was edited by Chris “MUG5” Maguire also, including FX, color etc with the icing on the cake coming thanks to the awesome animation talents of Ryan Schaefer.
The video features the acting talents of the lovely Lucy Griffiths, known for her work on True Blood, Robin Hood and Preacher who plays the love interest in the video. “Feels Like Falling In Love” was written at a time when The Xcerts lead singer Murray Macleod was suffering from a severely broken heart and is an ode to the hope that the way he felt wasn’t going to last forever. As such, our visuals, much like the song itself are equal parts dark and light and toy with the viewers heart strings to help them understand the pain and suffering Murray experienced.
CREDITS
CLIENT: The Xcerts
AGENCY: RIOT
PRODUCED BY: RIOT
PRODUCER: Chris “MUG5” Maguire
DIRECTOR: Chris “MUG5” Maguire
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Richard Shelton
1st ASSISTANT CAMERA / RONIN OPERATOR: Ben Walton
EDITING, POST, COLOR & MOTION GFX BY: Chris MUG5 Maguire
DIRECTOR OF ANIMATION: Ryan Schaefer
GAFFER: Rob Wilton
GAFFER / GRIP: Olly Hearsey
STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: Scarlett Casciello
HAIR & MAKEUP: Ioanna Pitsillou-Kruizenga
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Richard Humphris
ART DEPARTMENT: Pauline Maguire, Mike Maguire, Andrew Taylor, Julian Deane
SHOT AT: The Brighton Studios, UK
Our final work on the single was to create the pack shot that will represent the single across all online platforms. The final artwork, which can be seen below is actually a screen grab from the video, showcased in an abstract way with the focus being the “X” that Tom is making with his drum sticks, representing The Xcerts band name, while showing the very Tom Petty styled stance of Murray in the midst of rocking the fuck out. The artwork was created in the middle of creating the video and the red color wash actually became the inspiration for the coloring for that section of the video also, the whole thing being beautifully serendipitous.
We have already shot the video for the band’s next single too which we will post here as and when it is released. We will also be creating the pack shot so keep your eyes peeled for our continued work with the amazing The Xcerts. We have to say, their new album is phenomenal so it has been a pleasure creating visuals for it. Here’s to this album launching the guys through the stratosphere.
You can check out all our creative agency work with The Xcerts on Riot here.
