Johnny Cage and The Voodoo Groove

Johnny Cage and The Voodoo Groove are the inhouse band for What The Butler Saw. Heres one of their newer songs from the event I filmed at the Globe. The sound is completely out as it was mixed for live performance instead of for video. However I hope to re-shoot the band and to get a cleaner copy of this song. Its a slower tune and doesnt reflect the nature of the band, but it was very pretty so I created this more for me than anyone else.

JC&VDG Song1 from Natalie Clements on Vimeo.

Burlesque

So, for university I was required to do a simple interview scenario on location. So I decided to do a documentary with lots of interviews and live footage. I decided to work towards the theme of Burlesque. Its something that only seemed to have hit Cardiff in a more mainstream way over the past three years since a small group of people started a night named 'What The Butler Saw'.

I attended some of the first events at Buffalo bar and a few at Minskys over the years. However they are growing and developing all the time and are now holding events at The Globe in Cardiff and have aspirations to head into the London Scene and hold Festival events.

I began with contacting the organisers through their site and over facebook to discuss the idea of creating a documentary on them, they loved the idea. Then attended an event at Minskys to get a look at how the performers are today and chat to the crowd. I created a list of performers willing to be filmed and interviewed and collected as many contact details as possible.

I have already undertaken interviews with the key organisers of What The Butler Saw and attended their xmas event.

I've manage to get myself a small crew to include a second camera person, two sound men, one to work on live sound and the other to do my boom and a photographer. Unfortunately the lve sound techy wasnt available for the globe event so we ran an XLR straight into the camera, which worked, but wasnt great. There was also a projector over the band which comprimised lighting for both of my cameras and the photographers.

My next task is to get into studio with the main band and one or two dancers to get some really nice nice clean footage to work alongside the live stuff.

I've also asked to attend events at other venues, specifically Minskys and any new places they discover.

I've got a list of people I need to interview at some point, to include The Siren Sisters, a female singing trio, an erotic writer, owner of a new Burlesque clothing store in Cardiff and various dancers.

Back to IronClad

So I managed to get back in for another run of IronClad as Locations Assistant. I was required to assist on several different locations spanned over the month of November. We ended up back at St Donats, on a farm with castle ruins and on a beach. The beach was the most enjoyable. I had a wonderfull view of all the extras in the hazy sunlight walking coming out of the sea, although they weren't too impressed as it involved being freezing cold all day :/

Overall the experience, despite being extremely exhausting, was very enjoyable. I just have to cross my fingers now to see if I made it onto the credits!