Video | Covering Robert Smith's Meltdown Festival

Over June I covered Robert Smith’s Meltdown Festival at Southbank Centre – directing and producing shoots across the festival to create highlight reels and band interview videos.

Robert Smith, curator of the 2018 Meltdown, discusses putting together his festival, discovering new music, and the oddness of being considered a legend. Robert Smith's Meltdown was the 25th edition of Southbank Centre's annual contemporary music festival, staged in the heart of London.

It was one of the most intense working weeks I’ve pulled off in a long time, completely fuelled by coffee and adrenaline, but totally worth it. Getting to film upfront during performances of bands such as Deftones, Manic Street Preachers and Mogwai were definite highlights.

I learnt loads of lessons during this project – particularly the need for agility and the importance of hanging around backstage to grab last minute interview opportunities!

Special thanks also needs to go to Philip Jenkins and Ben Smith who provided much needed production support!

Mogwai

'The Cure were one of the first bands I got into as a teenager so I actually know how to play more of their songs than of any other people's songs,' said Barry Burns of Mogwai, speaking to Southbank Centre before the band's performance as part of Robert Smith's Meltdown.

Yonaka

Highlights from YONAKA's explosive Meltdown performance. Subscribe for the latest videos from Royal Festival Hall, Hayward Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room + more: http://bit.ly/SBCsubscribe Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/southbankcentre on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southbankcentre and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/southbankcentre

Deftones

'We're just honoured to be a part of this'. American alternative metal band Deftones take a look around Royal Festival Hall ahead of Robert Smith's Meltdown. Deftones are just one of a number of high profile bands lined up to play the 25th edition of Meltdown festival at Southbank Centre.

Exhibition: Rest & its discontents

Rest matters to everyone. Its presence, absence and quality affects mind, body, culture and society. Rest & its discontents explores the dynamics of rest, stress, relaxation, sound, noise, work and mindwandering in an evolving laboratory of moving image, performance, drawing, poetry, data, sound, music and debate. Rest & its discontents is currently on at the Mile End Art Pavilion until the 30th October (http://hubbubresearch.org/event/rest-discontents/).

Experience Composite (excerpt)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uebzjAe1FL0

Commissioned for Rest & its discontents.

The short film is the final piece I've produced as part of my 2-year residency within the Wellcome Collection's Hubbub Group.

The film uses material gathered from individuals participating in Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) to generate short vignettes which explore and re-interpret their inner experiences. DES is a method pioneered by US psychologist Russell Hurlburt which aims to document the nature and quality of an individual's inner experiences.

Participants are given a beeper that sounds randomly throughout the day and when it does, individuals are asked to make a note of the contents of their experience. Follow up interviews tease out the detail of each experience to produce a short "beep summary", a short vignette or snapshot of an isolated experience in time.

Experience Composite, uses the the contents of the beep summaries and experiments with framing, looping and over-dubbing to explore the nature of our inner experiences. The film also re-interprets the summaries in playful ways to highlight the unavoidable distortion and artifice introduced when attempting to document or conceptualise our inner experiences.