The Problem

2021. Remember it? Bad haircuts, scheduled outside time and, if you worked in video production, an endless headache.

At the time, I was in Essex while my client, soul singer Nate James, was over 300 miles away in Stirling, Scotland.

Not exactly a quick hop on the train.

Not that we could hop anywhere - except maybe in our own gardens.

Filming him in person for 1Kind was just not possible. But here's the thing: I really wanted Nate on camera for this because the song is so personal.

Nate is many things (MOBO-nominated artist, soulful powerhouse, all-round lovely bloke) but he's no filmmaker. So If I wanted him on camera I had to get creative.

The song

Nate’s song 1Kind is brimming with lyrical imagery—it’s his very own What’s Going On  moment.

The track digs into humanity’s biggest flaw: we just don’t seem to get along. Wars of opinion, battles over ethnicity, clashes about sexuality. But as Nate so eloquently puts it: underneath it all, we’re the same.

We are, quite literally, one kind.

Although written years earlier, the release landed perfectly in 2021—right in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the global outrage following the murder of George Floyd.

Suddenly, the song felt particularly relevant.

That gave me a lot of emotional material to work with. Dark, thought-provoking visuals were a given.

But I still needed Nate’s face in the frame to make this work and he was 300 miles away.

That's where things got interesting.

The inspiration

Two of my all-time favourite music videos became my guide:

Godley & Creme - Cry

By 1985 when this song came out, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme were already successful musicians (they were half of 10cc in the seventies). But they were also award winning video directors.

Their treatment of their own song Cry has always been a favourite. A simple close-up performance using multiple faces morphing seamlessly into one another. Remember, this was pre-digital. It was all made and edited using real film and they still nailed it.

Later, Michael Jackson and John Landis did something very similar with Michael's 'Black Or White' video but with some help from the latest CGI technology.

Sinéad O’Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U

The beautiful song is Sinéad's  1990 cover of a Prince original and a rare moment where the cover is way better than the original (although Prince nailed it too).

The video was directed by John Maybury and is pretty similar to the Godley and Creme video in that it was just a simple close image of Sinéad performing to camera cut with a few (in my opinion) shots of her walking through the Parc de Saint-Cloud in Paris.

The video closes with a beautiful and equally devastating moment where Sinéad cries on camera. The emotion was genuine, connected to thoughts of her mother, who had died in a car accident in 1985.

I wanted to fuse all of these influences into Nate’s video—keeping the raw emotion front and centre while using face-morphing to amplify the message.

The DIY technique

So, how do I film a professional-looking music video featuring an emotive, well lit performance against a black background from 300 miles away.

A smartphone, a bed, and a very patient partner.

Here’s the hack:

• I asked Nate to lay on his bed against a black sheet wearing a black top.
• His partner, Gerad, held the phone directly above him.
• The secret sauce? Don’t move the camera. At all. Not even a sneeze.

It took a few tries (the lighting nearly drove us mad—daylight and domestic lamps aren’t exactly cinematic), but we managed to get the raw performance footage I needed.

And this is probably the bit I like most about the whole thing.

I didn't have a studio.

I didn't have a crew.

I didn't even have the artist in the same country, let alone the same room.

We had a phone, a black sheet and a very specific idea of what I wanted the footage to look like.

Sometimes that's enough to get you started.

The edit

In post-production, I mixed Nate’s footage with carefully chosen stock video that reflected the song’s themes. During the chorus, I layered in those face-morphing effects pioneered by Godley & Creme.

And that opening in black and white?

 It was also a sneaky way to hide some of the less-than-perfect lighting we had from Nate's footage.

Sometimes necessity is the mother of... clever fixes.

The result

What we ended up with was a music video that looked intentional, emotional, and powerful—despite the constraints of filming during lockdown.

Nate’s performance, combined with the morphing effects, brought the song’s central message to life.

Plus it was a great way for me to honour two music videos that remain amongst the greatest ever made. It proved something I come back to again and again: you don't necessarily need a huge budget or a pile of fancy equipment to make something memorable.

You need an idea.

Then you need to work out how the hell you're going to make it happen.

Sometimes that takes money. Sometimes it takes very little.

Often, it takes a bit of problem-solving.

And occasionally it takes a bloke lying on a bed in Scotland while someone holds a phone over him.

This was certainly a challenge. And I loved it.

HOW I MADE THIS VIDEO

I've made quite a few music videos over the years, and they all have a story behind them.

Some involved big ideas. Some involved tiny budgets. Some involved technology. Some involved making things up as I went along.

How I Made This Video is where I pull apart some of those projects and show you what actually went into making them.

More from the series:

• How I Made This Video: [EM Kane – Wasted Time]
• How I Made This Video: [Nate James - Chasing The Sun]
• How I Made This Video: [Anthony Hughes - Body Sayin']