Hallelujah Picassos “Rewind”

A song about relaxing and taking it easy, which seems to be the national genre of New Zealand. The “Rewind” video is a cruisy collection of a lively studio performance and scenes from New Zealand.

It’s a fun video that nicely captures the spirit of the song, with green screen used quite thoughtfully. The background images, scenes of both rural and urban New Zealand, are contrasted with the laid-back band.

The video also features the nice bright, highly saturated colour palette that was cool in the ’90s, and I think this kind of colour use has come back around. Now all we need is for chunky green screen to become cool again.

Best bit: the green-screened turntable.

Directors: Clinton Phillips, Peter McLennan
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Bonus: Peter McLennan of the Hallelujah Picassos has again been kind enough to share his experience of the video:

We worked with Stratford Productions on this video, as we did for the previous video Lovers Plus. The latter video was directed by Bruce Sheridan, and for this one we worked with Clinton Phillips. I co-directed the video with Clinton, which was very generous of him, as he did a lot of the work, really. We shot Rewind at the Powerstation, using the stage for the band footage, and shooting from the balcony for the verses, looking down on Bobbylon, singing. We bounced round the stage Roland and myself wearing turntables strapped on like guitars, and Johnnie playing his korg synth, nicknamed the Hog.

The black and white footage in the verses was shot on super 8 film by me, while we were on tour. I gave it to Clinton to send off for telecine transfer over in Sydney and never saw it again, which was a bit sad. There’s also footage shot on video of us clowning round on the roof of Civic House, next to DKD, which also makes a brief appearance in the video. The only green screen is on the record on the turntable, which also serves up my fave shot in the video, at 2.09 – Roland doing his best Michael Jackson tippy-toes dance move.

This song will be included on the forthcoming collection of Hallelujah Picassos tunes, remastered for CD/digital. Out before the end of the year.

Next… do the wildebeast

0 thoughts on “Hallelujah Picassos “Rewind””

  1. Yes: Roland and his green-screen turntable tippy-toes also one of my fave images of REWIND! Also Bobbylon, a cool focal point while the band danced crazily around him! (My next video after this also featured Bobbylon – guest vocals on HIP HOP HOLIDAY by 3 The Hard Way). Cheers, Clinton

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *