foreign beggars - Apex

All the way back in may I was contacted by production manager Inshra Russell, would I be interested in doing a bit of make up on a video for uk hip hop outfit foreign beggars? why certainly!
Filming took place over two days, the first was on location at a place called  Frogmore paper mill  (A  200 year old working paper mill in the town of Apsley near Hemel Hempstead it made an interesting and very atomospheric location, for more info you can visit their website. http://www.thepapertrail.org.uk) 

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If you think the cyborg in the boiler suit looks vaguely familiar, thats because it was played by Ed Skrein (star of Plan B's recent film Ill Manors)  Despite Ed's hard man exterior he was as nice a man as you could possibly hope to meet, extremely professional ( he patiently put up with me attacking him with latex, powder and lipstick through out the day) and I think he's definately one to watch for the future.

Choreographing and also playing opposite Mr Skrein was martial artist and breakdancer Dan Dewhirst, not being much of sports enthusiast myself I have to say I found it exhausting just watching them, and was very impressed that they managed to keep going throughout the entire days filiming.

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Inshra, Rik and Eliot going for a take

For day two we were based at the wonderful (but well hidden) Camberwell studios in order to make use of their green room
facilities. This part of the video was focused specifically on the song with various fx  (such as the glowing eyes) to be added in later, and so we were joined by the foreign beggars themselves: Pavan, Ebow, and James who gave an absolutely blinding performance of 'Apex', which I tried (rather unsuccessfully) to capture on my dodgy phone camera (see pic below)

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the foreign beggars

Over all I had a lot of fun making this video, the cast & crew (see below) were not just extremely professional but also a lovely group of people and I hope you enjoyed the finished product

CAST AND CREW

DIRECTOR: BEN SOPER
 PRODUCER: RIK GREEN
PRODUCTION MANAGER: INSHRA RUSSELL
DIRECTOR PHOTOGRAPHY: MAREK BORKOWSKI
FOCUS PULLER: EDGAR WITTEK
CAMERA ASSIST/DIT: EMILY PAYNE
GAFFER: RAY COOK
HAIR & MAKEUP: SIWAN
WARDROBE STYLING: CHESCA
                                                  PRODUCTION DESIGN: HELA DONDERTMAN
                                                   RUNNERS ELLIOTT & JAHAN

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