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Pure Imagination

Abbey Road Studios are an inspiring and historic place to work in and this year I’ve spent quite a bit of time there. On this occasion it was for recording of Josh Groban’s new album ‘Stages’. I was blown away by the fact that so many of the mics, recording desks are just lying around that have witnessed some of the most famous musical moments in history. This EMI mic is indeed one of those hard working artefacts. Not as rare as the only two EMI RM-1B mics resident here but still iconic. On another shoot in Studio 2 I asked if an old upright piano could be moved out of shot because it looked a bit shabby to be told that it was the piano ‘Hey Jude’ and various other Beatles songs was played on!

We spent about a week in different venues, theatres and locations shooting different parts of the promotional video for this new Album. Here is Josh in Abbey Road Studio 1 with his musical collaborators as there was a full orchestral score which we also filmed being recorded. We had the whole of Studio 1 to use as a backdrop for some of the numbers and this is moments before recording one of them. We also shot the cover from ‘Charlie in the Chocolate factory’ number ‘Pure Imagination’ in a old warehouse in the outskirts of Dalston as shown above in the highlighted promo.

Bernie Herms, Josh Groban and Humberto Gatica at Abbey Road studio 1 after recording with a 75 piece orchestra. Here is a link to ‘Stages’ a look at the Album with Josh Groban

Here are the links to the other numbers from ‘Stages’ below that we shot during that week:

Bring him Home

What I did for Love

Anthem    (Worth a watch for the Lovely Steadicam work by Martyn Porter)