It’s always a pleasure to work with Ragdoll Sunday. We started recording their new album back in April … I think. It’s been countless sessions in Chickenhill as Manny slammed down on the double bass pedals, vibrating the mortar from between the cinder block walls. Ollie spat thunderous grunts from the dank pits hell with his four-stringed tool of carnage, while Adonis displaced reality punishing his tormented guitar. Marco’s visits required building 20 cm thick acoustic wall segments to stack around him to prevent his piercing vocals to penetrate into the office spaces through the rest of the industrial building. Much spiced rum was consumed as well as gallons of coffee. Purged beer cans and bottles were scattered throughout the room, leaving dreaded condensation rings on the surfaces of precious audio gear. Good memories all around, but we were finally done with the audio recording portion of our most recent creative endeavour and had moved on to music video production side of things. Our first video project was for the song Post Rona Perfect, and a slight departure from our usual style we have done for the past Ragdoll videos. I arrived at 9am to the empty venue and dragged all the gear into the middle of the shooting area. I had bought three rolls of bright white photographic background paper that is 3 metres wide by 11 long. The idea was to have a complete white backdrop for the lyrics to be painted on by different extras as the band performed the song in the foreground. With the help of Wilma and Marco, we successfully had our stage set for shooting. We used four cameras and shot in segments of lyrics to make sure the addition of words painted on the paper was the same as what was being sung. By the end of the song the entire white surface was a colourful collage of the songs message, and we were knee-deep in balloons, confetti, streamers, spent spray-cans and sweat. It was so much fun and took forever to clean up. We certainly think the final product was worth the preparation, effort, and stress.
