Great Escape

Carlisle based seven piece rock group Hardwicke Circus are something of a time machine in musical terms. They have been likened to the Rolling Stones and there are indeed similarities given both the instrumental and stylistic range that groups like the Stones would achieve, but never have I heard a group with as much going on as this band.

With this project the aim was not to record songs or conduct proper interviews but just to capture the essence of the group. So I adopted a semi fly-on-the-wall approach as the group set up to perform as part of the Great Escape Festival at Brighton’s Grand Central. Getting the guys talking was pretty good fun. Having previously conducted over a hundred interviews on my former health and fitness channel this was a bit of a cake walk. I knew I wanted to quiz them for their take on modern music and the spirit of rock so I bounced them off each other for their answers whilst also examining their retro fashion choices.

Filming gigs is also something I have a fair amount of experience in with also around one hundred live music performance videos under the belt. This however was a bit of an awkward gig as the room was just about big enough to house the band, let alone a crowd. On top of that the organisers had about four cameras filming (footage that has never surfaced) and were a little touchy about anyone getting in the way. So I chose to capture as much of the set up and behind the scenes as I could get then to slip around the group between songs to focus on the different parts of the band.

In the edit I knew I wanted everything to have a timeless retro feel so I made the rare choice of putting the interview segments in a sepia monochrome whilst the performances I treated with a custom blend of tinted shadows, gaussian blur and prism effects to give the look of old seventies/eighties style television footage on a CRT television.