I was (almost) Robbie Williams

Some things in life you choose for yourself, the course, the topic, the project. And sometimes the lecturers sit at the front, smile warmly, and say, "You'll reproduce the music video Angels by Robbie Williams." And with that, the discussion is over.

That's how our semester project began.

We were five students, armed with a camera, lots of enthusiasm, and the blind optimism of people who don't yet know what's coming for them. The plan: rebuild the original as closely as possible, storyboard, location scouting, prototype, video editing, and of course our own audio reconstruction.

I played Robbie Williams

Yes, exactly. Me. And no, I'm not going to comment on how convincing that was. Along with my role in front of the camera, I was also responsible for the colour grading, making sure the final result looked at least somewhat like a professional music video, not like a 2003 vacation video. Since we were only five people, I also ended up doing all sorts of other set-related tasks.

We worked with DaVinci Resolve for this. Good choice, in principle. Except when you run the free version on Linux: the software supports Apple ProRes as the only truly useful codec. That sounds harmless, until you start converting all the footage. Which by the way I also did on Linux with a neat little Shell Script using ffmpeg.

In the end, we had almost 2 TB of raw data.

For a university project. About a music video. From 1997.

The solution: a 2 TB Google Drive subscription, so all team members, whether on Windows, Mac, or Linux, could access the same files. Modern. Pragmatic. And somehow absurd.

The locations: from campus to a nudist beach

We shot in two very different places.

First: the THM campus in Gießen, obvious, practical, our home-field advantage. You know the corners, you know where you can park, and at some point the security staff recognizes you by name.

Second: a nudist beach. Which, at the time, was officially closed for the season. We did, however, have the operator's permission, so everything was completely legal and relaxed. Or at least as relaxed as you can be when filming with a film camera on a closed nudist beach.

Low budget, high ambition, the prop compromises

The original video has a certain cinematic grandness. We interpreted it in our own way:

• Instead of a helicopter -> a drone (similar effect, much more budget-friendly)
• Instead of a motorcycle -> a bicycle (less noise, more character) and how often we shot that scene… phew.

Did we capture the creative essence of the original? That's up to the viewer to decide.

And the audio track?

We actually produced that too, really. It existed. It was finished.

And then it somehow disappeared into the depths of my archive and has been lost ever since.

That's why you'll hear the original audio track by Robbie Williams in the embedded video below.

YouTube unfortunately won't embed properly for these two videos, so you'll need to watch the results using these links instead:

• Reproduction
• Original

That was our semester: lots of footage, lots of storage, a closed beach, a bicycle as a substitute for the motorcycle, and in the end, a completed music video that we're genuinely proud of. Sometimes the best projects come from assignments you didn't choose yourself.

And on that note, a big thank you again to my fellow students, we were a great team. I still look back on the project fondly. Even if I can't listen to the song anymore myself.