VIDEO OF THE WEEK: Lein Sangster – ‘Odds Are Stacked’

“THIS was a really big budget video which came off the back of something else. I composed the music and sound design for this film called ‘Unhappy Birthdays’ – it’s like a queer folk horror and it actually got distributed by Dogwoof in the States – and I spent six months of my life in 2010 on this soundtrack, but I didn’t get paid or anything, but it was just when I was doing some soundtrack stuff.

So the director of that, Mike Matthews, is a friend of mine and he really liked the ‘Odds Are Stacked’ single and he was like, “Oh I’d love to do a video because I’m getting into pop videos, so do you fancy it?” And I said yes but didn’t really think too much of it and he’d been working like as a food director with Nigella Lawson and loads of stuff for television but he didn’t want to be typecast as the food guy, he wanted to branch out because he loves music.

Anyway, we had a meeting about it and he bought this guy from the company, but I still didn’t think it was going to be this massive budget. So on the day I got some of my friends involved and the woman who plays the woman by the pool in the yellow jacket, she flew in from LA for the video, and when I got there in the morning there was like thirty-five crew already with all this huge amounts of lighting gear, and don’t forget I’d worked on indie films and I’d never seen anything fucking like this!

So, I turned up, it was in June, and another thing about that was it pissed down all week, and I said to Mike what will we do if it rains? And he went “It’s not gonna rain,” and I said, “You’re in with God now Mike, what’s going on?!”

But on the day – and it rained for about ten days – but on the day it was fucking beautiful weather, and I’m not religious or anything, but it was like Mike had done a pact! 

Someone else had just flown in from like Amsterdam where he’d just worked on a Pharrell video, they had a St John Ambulance man there in case someone drowned and because I’m vegan the food they had was all vegan and it wasn’t just vegan, just a little sandwich with vegan pate on it, it was like this elaborate buffet!

And the first shot they had this drone, and I was on this diving board with my Hofner guitar, which is one of my lovely guitars that I cherish and I’m looking up at his drone thinking if this drone drops on me what will I do? Oh, I’ll just swing that way off the diving board and I’ll throw my Hofner on the grass, that’s all I could think, it was just so funny!

But everyone on what was like this big shoot was treating me with the status that I didn’t have like a diva – and the funny thing was they gave me my train fare; they gave everyone expenses then they gave me some train fare!”

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