Vol. 13
We don’t endorse letting off flares at football matches, but if you are going to, you should at least get a drone to film it. This volume of Cut Culture features some photogenic football fans, a revolutionary interactive short film, and an introduction to a photographer who you’ll be seeing a lot of in the future. Plus, we’re pulling back the curtain on our latest shoot for MrQ, featuring the most impressive blooper you’re ever likely to see.
Cut Culture
No Pyro, No Party.
Long-time Cut Culture readers will know that we’ve got a bit of a penchant for epic drone footage. Now, football fans can be scary. Even the 12-year-olds wearing Stone Island would probably give you a rough afternoon if they learned to work together. However, I venture that even those rock solid children would be quaking in their Air Max’s if confronted by the loyal following of Lech Poznan. As we’ve said, we do not condone taking flares into football matches, and if you do so, then you’re a very naughty boy. Saying that, the pyro party that the Lech Poznan fans created to celebrate the club’s centenary is pretty spectacular. It would likely be hard to do it justice with video, but this drone footage does that and then some. This looks more like the Quidditch World Cup than a football match. As you’ll see from the video, the fans also raised an enormous TIFO behind the goal. As extraordinary as it is, this does highlight what is vaguely comical about quote unquote ‘ultras’: that mentality of “we’re proper solid, but we also do arts and crafts”. Saying that, you can tell they put in the work, so we’re here for it. We wish we could credit the drone pilot, but they haven’t made themselves known - which in some ways adds to the legend, as great footage like this needn’t come from a trained cameraman anymore, it could just be some pissed up football fan. So, drink in the video in all its atmospheric glory. And, whatever you do, don’t actually call it arts and crafts to the Lech Poznan ultras’ faces.
Night and Day.
Before we get started on this one, we implore you to go here to watch the full short film of The Alter on Swamp Motel’s website. Due to the mysterious wonders of Squarespace, we’re unable to embed it, and the following will make an awful lot more sense if you’ve seen the video. Plus, it’s just a quality piece of work and is worth the watch regardless. Swamp Motel are an immersive entertainment company who you may know from their previous hits, the Isklander online game trilogy and their recent live experience, The Drop. For their latest project, they’ve partnered with The Lowry to create an interactive short film, featuring two intersecting timelines between which the viewer is able to switch with just a thud of their space bar turning night into day and vice versa. And, as it turns out, this is an incredibly engrossing way of consuming content - even just for the power trip of being able to click one’s fingers to dictate the action. While this is a novel technique, the end product is anything but gimmicky, and actually forces you to ponder some fairly deep philosophical questions at times. We won’t give too much away in case you haven’t watched it yet, but we’ll just let you know that the story involves a treasure map. And it might make you think twice before booking a staycation in the Cotswolds…
BTS
‘You win some, you lose some’: a tried and tested, age-old adage that reminds us not to get too giddy with our successes or too despondent with our failures. How very Zen. Not quite so popular amongst Russian Roulette players, mind you. It was, however, the cornerstone of the idea behind MrQ’s latest campaign.
We picked up this production brief from Fall Off the Wall, who were responsible for the campaign idea and all post-production, but needed someone to take care of the front end (AKA actually shooting it). That’s where we came in.
We had one day to shoot in a studio cove with 3 different set-ups for MrQ to turn his hand at - the claw machine, the basketball hoop, and the axe throw. It was on this final set-up where MrQ finally got a win, demonstrating that persistence is a virtue - although we don’t encourage amateur axe-throwing.
As you’ll see from the outtakes below, saying that that was MrQ’s first win is slightly misleading, as our actor Charlie actually managed to accidentally sink 3 out of 10 over-the-shoulder basketball shots into the hoop. It was the most confusing demonstration of unintentional sporting excellence you’ve ever seen.
Check that glorious mistake out below along with the final film.
Radar
Hanina Pinnick - Photographer
We wouldn’t normally big up a person just on the basis of the brands that they’ve worked with, but this is somewhat of an exception. Adidas, Nike, Footlocker, Converse, Ugg, New Balance, NME - just to name a few. With a client list like that, you’d be forgiven for assuming that Hanina has been knocking around for a couple decades. In reality, though, she’s one of the most sought after young talents around. To call her up-and-coming would be a gross mischaracterisation and understatement, though, as she’s already very much arrived and is consistently delivering her distinctive aesthetic for some of sport and lifestyle’s biggest brands. Speaking of which, we’ve just spent a few days with her in sunny Spain shooting for Puma’s upcoming ‘Cali Dream’ campaign. Keep an eye out for that in next month’s Cut Culture.
Head over to Hanina’s Instagram to check out more of her work.