This was our first 'music video'. It was also the first fully scripted thing we shot and for good reason. Based on the lyrics of the song of the same name by Dire Straits, it was done for a film competition in a UK magazine where the brief the year before had been to produce something that ran in 15 minutes or less.

DAN STRAITS: Private Investigator

The script of the actual song section was done by a guy called David Kiff, who played the private investigator and myself listening to the track on CD and pausing it after getting an idea for a scene. We would jot down the time from the players display and use that to establish how long each scene should be. That was typed up on the Amiga with the music time in the margin so we could play the correct section of music to the actors on location to enable them to get their timing right for each shot.

JOHN BEVAN: Client

We scripted and shot it with a short 8 minute drama section at the beginning that flowed into the song, which itself was over 6 minutes long. It was felt that we needed to 'set the scene' for the music story we had interpreted to help it make sense to the viewer. Unfortunately for us, the next competition had reduced the required running time down to ten minutes so we never entered it.

JACK CONWAY: The local Mr Big

Again, shot locally in Barnstaple, Devon, UK and in the managers office of the place where I still work, it marked the first use of improved equipment in the form of a Panasonic S-VHS camcorder for better video quality and a Panasonic digital video mixer that allowed two video sources to be mixed together along with a full size S-VHS editing deck that did totally clean edits. This allowed us to be more creative in editing, doing such things as shooting out of order, scene dissolves and split screen effects that today, would be taken for granted.

The start and end titles were all done on a Commodore Amiga 500 computer and mixed/faded in to the film with the vision mixer. Artwork was done on Deluxe Paint including designing a film poster that I put up at work to advertise it. The whole look of the film was much better than before and it's a film I am still proud of today.

Click the Private Investigator above for more 'behind the scenes' info on the movie..

Click the Windows Cinema or Quicktime Cinema icon below to watch the movie.

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