August 2008 Archives

The Top (Music Video) from Francis and the Lights

Francis and the Lights has a music video called The Top from their short album A Modern Promise and it looks like he might be amazing. This was shot on film with live audio. All the vocals and bulb smashes are real. Not only that but at A Modern Promise's website you can download a 1080p version of the video at a very high quality in one of Apple's mastering codecs. It took about 4 hours to download and it is incredible quality. The first thing I did was make a Blu-ray disc so I could watch it in the living room in full 120" 1080p quality. Fantastic. Francis and the Lights is really doing everything right.

Both of these videos are available at higher quality on each of their sites but The Top is available at several quality levels at the A Modern Promise site or at my house it is the best.

Update: I spoke a little too soon. That high quality file is great but the blacks are blacker than black and the whites are way over the top. I took it into Color to lift the blacks a bit, roll off the whites and take out the blue shift in the blacks to warm it up a bit and make his suit look a little more natural. Now it looks the best ever and I bought the album and it is really something.

While doing some sound research I was reading about the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop and looking at some pictures of their old equipment and watching videos of very nerdy Englishmen banging on old tea pots. This led me to

Delia Derbyshire who worked at the Radiophonic Workshop during the 60's and 70's. She has some amazing videos spread through the internet of her just making sounds, primarily for electronic music.

One my favorite themes is the Doctor Who theme song. A guy named Ron Grainer is listed as the composer but Delia was the one who took his song and put together the electronic arrangement that I love so much. Some more samples of Delia's music is on her site. I recommend Moogies Bloogies. It is pretty weird.

The BBC has digitized some of her old tapes found in an attic after she had died in 2001. They are pretty interesting for their time but not up to Doctor Who theme standards. I think that is what I was really hoping for. If she only had a podcast; I could subscribe.