The making of the Dimmu Borgir, Gateways cover video.
For the Blogcast audio please click here.
I’ve been singing this song on and off for around 6 months, and it’s the first song I learnt to do any kind of ‘extreme’ vocals to.
The original plan was to record it back in October after I did the Lucifer cover video, but I got a horrendous virus and lost my voice, and once I had recovered I was too deep into Christmas work commitments to spare the time.
Even though I’ve had a basic vision for this video since then, I kind of lost my enthusiasm for recording it. It felt too big to achieve; I had dwelled on it too long, and general doubts and such made it seem a bigger task that I was capable of.
Even the day of recording when I was still setting up – I still wasn’t sure I was even going to do it. But I pushed through the weird feelings, got all the hair and makeup on, and then suddenly started to feel pretty epic.
The pink dressing gown strikes again 
Rehearsals! 
After the first dunking
Even though the singing portion was over pretty quickly (after 1 rehearsal, 1 messed up take, and 1 take where my dog started barking in the background), the filler shots actually took the rest of the evening to shoot!
One shot that didn’t make it was me actually spitting the blood out towards the camera. I had set a large piece of perspex over the camera – placed bin bags out everywhere and pulled my white coat back as I was terrified of getting it stained.
As it was I think I was too afraid of it going everywhere as the final shot didn’t look great – however the blood dripping down my chin definitely did!!!
I definitely suffered for my art shooting this, with 3 truely disgusting shots.
The first being the ‘powder mouth’ shot. Similar to the blood, but less messy. I used flour – as I felt this was the safest to use – but my goodness it was absolutely disgusting after the first blow (no jokes please!), because it went horribly thick and cakey in my mouth. One day I might show the video as the camera was still rolling as I was dealing with this horrible mess in my mouth (again no jokes please!!!!)
The second and third hardest shots were in the water. When I was a kid I actually used to spend alot of time swimming underwater as I loved it – but I always had to wear a nose clip because even the smallest amount of water would caused me immense pain due to my adinoids and sinuses. It’s a been a long time since I’ve swum underwater and so putting my head under the first time, I kind of forgot how awful it would be! Came up in pain, coughing and spluttering all over the place – thankfully my housemate was in the room with me to supervise that I didn’t end up drowning myself! And well… I got the shot!
If you fancy a laugh after watching the main cover I’ve included a little ‘out takes’ clip of this at the bottom!
After the one with the full Shagrath makeup I needed a similar shot for the beginning but with less makeup than before. To me, when I watch the video back, you can actually see the fear in my eyes before I go under as this time I knew what was coming!! I watched the footage back and although I was annoyed I’d screwed my face up when I went under, there was no way I was going to attempt that again!!!
When it came to editing it all together, it was definitely harder than the one shot takes of the previous videos. And more so because on a few instances I hadn’t got exactly the shots I wanted. But one of the biggest things you learn in the film and TV industry is sometimes shots don’t go according to plan, sometimes you get a chance to adapt and redo them then and there on set, but sometimes it’s only when the editors get hold of them they realise there’s a problem and so you have to work around the footage you have.
Overall I love this video, as always, with an objective eye (or rather ear) there are plenty of holes in the vocal performance – but then a lot of live performances aren’t exactly gold either, and it’s with that realisation that I have to take off my perfectionist hat and enjoy what’s there.
One of the main reasons I do this kind of cover video – rather than the conventional “Headphones on, studio background” videos is because I am performer. I love it. It’s all I’ve ever known. And whilst I love the simplicity of normal covers, ultimately I’m about the whole package. The costumes, the make up, the physicality of it all – You can take the girl out of musical theatre but you can’t take the ‘over dramatic flair for performance’ out of the girl!!!
Blogcast
And as promised here is the out take clips from the dreaded ‘bathtub’ shots!
Stefani Keogh 