DESCRIPTION:
Directed by TIm Riley.
This promo was commissioned by BMG/RCA after I submitted a storyboard, style treatment and proposal. The video was based on a single image from a Salvador Dali photograph after the group's singer, Paul Frederick, had said the lyrics were conceived while reading a book about surrealism.

The Family Cat were a rising indie guitar band at time of this video. They had received music industry plaudits from their early releases and were the darlings of the NME. The band wanted a video that would try and portray their live experience without filming a live gig.

Shooting on film in a studio in Cricklewood I used coloured lights and cardboard shapes to create over-lapping colours in the camera and avoid expensive post production costs. All the film was shot portrait rather than landscape to speed up the editing process when the split screen was composed.

The video was very well received by both the record company and band. Airplane Gardens single spent one week in the charts following the video's brief appeared on ITV's The Chart Show.

As they were now signed to a major label and about to release their "difficult" third album the band were expected to deliver regular chart success. Their following two singles failed to have an impact on the charts and as a result they were unable to attain the heights of their indie contemporaries like Blur and Elastica.

http://www.timrileydigital.com/moving_image.html