december 14, 2011 09:46am
Manchester: Beyond Oasis (Trailer)
Posted By: seriousfeather
december 14, 2011 09:33am
Mark Heywood ‘Blue Wembley’ (Manchester City FA Cup Final Song 2011) – Par
What a fantastic week for the Serious Feather production team and, more importantly, for Mark Heywood and his Manchester City FA Cup Final song, 'Blue Wembley'. The support, response and exposure we've all received really has been quite incredible. :) It feels like an age ago now but, following our mix and mastering of the track (Top work, Jey!), as well as the production and post-production of the video promo (Top work, Nic and Gwyn!) on the 7th and 8th May, we released the completed project on YouTube and Vimeo in the early hours of Monday 9th May.
By the morning (and after only 4 hours sleep) we noticed the music video had already received over 1000 hits. Cool! But little did we know this was only the beginning. :) On Tuesday 10th May Mark was interviewed about the project on Talksport, a UK-wide radio station, while later that same day some guy had ripped the song and used it as soundtrack to his own fan-based montage video on YouTube; he gave us appropriate credit however, as well as links to our website, so we gave his project our blessing. (It's a nice video. I'm not sure about what copyright permissions he secured though!). On Wednesday 11th May however things went a bit crazy.
A link to our official video was suddenly posted on The Sun's website by their online sports editor, Jim Munro; in turn, a story then appeared in our local South Manchester newspaper, the Altrincham and Sale Messenger. Following this another article then appeared in the Manchester Evening News, Greater Manchester's regional newspaper, and an hour or so later the video was posted on Manchester City FC's Official Facebook page. We received something like a 100 Likes in 5 minutes which was amazing, but amazing suddenly turned into incredible when Manchester City FC then posted the video and a press release on their main website. Happy days! :) By Thursday 11th May, three days before the FA Cup Final, two 'scallywags' had ripped our entire 'Blue Wembley' video promo and posted it on YouTube under their own names and without any appropriate credit or links.
Not very cool, particularly since the project is aimed at raising donations for Manchester Children's Critical Care Fund, but such is life online these days, I suppose. Which reminds me: if any of you Serious Feather followers out there are interested in feeling a little bit better about yourselves today, then why not donate to this worthwhile charity here? Go on, dig deep. It won't hurt. :) Anyway, on Thursday afternoon, following another promotional interview with Mark on the XFM Breakfast Show, another UK-wide radio station, we received an email from one of our media contacts in London which said, 'If you can get Mark with his guitar to Wembley by Friday Sky Sports News will DEFINITELY cover the story.' Following a barrage of begging and borrowing telephone calls throughout the rest of the day Mark finally threw caution to the wind and superstition into the rain and was on a coach bound for London at 5am on Friday the 13th. All he took with him was his guitar, his Ipad and a copy of In Bruges. :) Phone calls from Manchester to London and back again to Sky, ITV and ITN continued throughout all Friday in an effort to confirm the interview (or any interview!) with Mark outside Wembley Stadium (Top work, Alistair!).
It was quite a tiring and frustrating experience, and the most difficult part (as is always the case with us) was trying to convince jaded mainstream media-types who are often riddled with doubt and distrust that Serious Feather is real and our 'Blue Wembley' project was legitimate, newsworthy and happening. Little did they know however that Serious Feather simply refuse to concede defeat ever and, sure enough, Sky Sports News carried out a live interview with Mark outside Wembley at 5pm like they were always destined to. :) To end, I couldn't have written the narrative events for Saturday 14th May better myself. It was truly a wonderful day for ourselves and for Manchester as a whole. Alistair and I set up camp in our local true blue pub, The Brook, at 12:45pm to firstly watch Manchester United seal their 19th Premiership title against Blackburn and then at 3pm to watch Manchester City (thank you! thank you! thank you!) win the FA Cup Final against Stoke, their first trophy for 35 years. Drunken celebrations both naturally and unnaturally ensued and, for one night at least, Manchester resumed its rightful place at the centre of the known universe. What a project! :)
Posted By: seriousfeather
december 14, 2011 09:26am
Mark Heywood 'Blue Wembley' (Manchester City FA Cup Final Song 2011) - Part 1
Well, literally out of the blue, I was contacted on Thursday, 5th May, with a project proposal from local singer/songwriter Mark Heywood to shoot the unofficial video promo for Manchester City’s FA Cup Final appearance against Stoke City at Wembley on Saturday, 14th May. In turn, the aim of this proposal was to also help raise awareness and, ideally, donations to Manchester Children’s Critical Care Fund. Hmm... The challenge here then was to coordinate, shoot, edit, grade and release the completed promo in three days to allow for at least 6 days of online promotion before the final. Furthermore, since Mark had recorded the song, ‘Blue Wembley’, by himself on his 8-track the crew all felt, if we were to commit, it would really benefit from a re-mix and a re-master. Mark agreed, and the wheels began to turn. Following an 11 hour shoot at Eastlands, the city centre and Mary D’s Beamish Bar throughout Saturday, we then hit the editing suite on Sunday for another 12 hours for some crazy, bitter, beautiful grafting. Nic Jackson, Alistair Topping and Gwyn Hemmings were absolutely fantastic (‘Pain is temporary, film is forever, lads!’), but Jey Kazi did an absolutely immense job on the re-mix. As a consequence, we’re very proud of what we’ve been able to achieve as a small group in such a short time-scale. We hope you are too.
Posted By: seriousfeather
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