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| Screenshots from the official video, edit by Sukje |
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The Lovell Telescope or Jodrell Bank radar is located in Cheshire, near the place where ex-drummer Steve Hewitt grew up. In the “Once more with feeling” DVD he said that he used to hang out near this huge dish when he was a kid and “I never thought I’d be with the band, playing on top of it. It’s kind of a huge thing to achieve.“ But Brian immediately destroyed this narrative by revealing that they never really played on the satellite dish: “I hate to break the mystery, but the band isn’t playing on the telescope itself. Thanks to technology we did it in the studio. This video was filmed in January. So it would have been too cold for us to be comfortable up there.“Stefan explained that after some videos which were a lot like short movies (like for example “Special K” or “Slave to the wage”) Placebo wanted to do a clip in which they could perform as band again.
Howard Greenhalgh had the idea for the location but was first convinced he would not be able to film it (see his statement below) but luckily he was wrong. Steve explained Howard's approach to the clip like this: “He tries to retain a modernist attitude towards most videos and tries to keep it futuristic, which I think you get from this.“ Brian thought about the idea for the video that it was visually arresting and would show the band in the best light possible.
For parts of the music clip Howard used heat-seeking cameras on night-time shots. In an interview the band said that this was very interesting and felt gorgeous because it was the first time they had seen something like this.
“There is a great energy on ‘The bitter end’. It just builds and builds. It does the song justice“, Steve Hewitt stated in an interview.
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| Screenshot from the official video |
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“One of my favourites was 'The bitter end' because I couldn't believe we were able to film it. We thought: let's make the end of the world, the end of the world according to the script, so let's make a video about two people who found love, and this blows up the world, but before that, the band needs to play somewhere. Let's put them on a satellite dish. When we arrived at the filming location, we were not allowed to film the group inside the plate. It was very dangerous so they only allowed us to film it from different angles. And we shot everything inside the telescope. And we filmed it outside. And then, in the studio, we overlaid the band's footage on a satellite dish. And we filmed around the saucer, flying in a helicopter. I couldn't believe they would let us do this. It was a telescope. "Wow!" We thought that we would not be allowed to fly in a helicopter, to shoot a satellite dish from the inside. We thought we could only remove the plate from the side. It's incredible. I also liked shooting with an infrared camera, because it was part of the story - the story of lost souls, they meet, and everything falls apart. We had special installations, lightning struck everywhere in the frame. And I think in this video Stefan looked like a "God of Rock" with his bass. I think that all the shots with them were good. I think, that it was one of their most comprehensible tracks. It was like a song with a good chorus. It brought them a lot of success. I remember how I came to the record company. The guys and I were there to talk about filming 'The bitter end'. And the first question Brian asked me was, "What do you think of this track?" He had never asked me that before. And I think he really, really liked this track. Maybe I could be wrong that he doubted the song, but I got the impression that he really liked the track and they wanted to know what I thought of it. I liked the track. I'll tell you one thing: I have Placebo records in my car and I need to be very careful when I play their music. Speeding is something that happens all the time when I listen to them. Damn it, I'm speeding.”
(Placebo Story Project, 2016)
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| Screenshot from the official video |
The Lovell Telescope is a radio telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory near Goostrey, Cheshire in the north-west of England. When the construction was finished in 1957 the telescope was the largest steerable dish radio telescope in the world. It is now the third-largest. t was originally known as the "250 ft telescope" or the Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank, before becoming the Mark I telescope around 1961. It was renamed to Lovell Telescope in 1987 after Sir Bernard Lovell and became a Grade I listed building in 1988. The telescope forms part of the MERLIN and European VLBI Network arrays of radio telescopes.
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| Screenshot from the official video |
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Howard Douglas Greenhalgh was born in Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire on February 19th 1963. Apart from “The bitter end” in 2003 he directed six other videos for Placebo: “Nancy Boy”, “Bruise Pristine” (both 1997), “Slave to the wage” (2000), “Special K” (2001), “This Picture” (also 2003) and “For what it's worth” (2009). The British director of music videos and advertising also worked with bands like Pet Shop Boys, The Jesus and Mary Chain, A-ha, Sting, Elton John, George Michael, Snap!, Spice Girls, Genesis, Sneaker Pimps, Muse, Iron Maiden, Billy Talent, INXS and OMD. One of his most famous music clips is probably “Black hole sun” by Soundgarden. Describing his approach to music video direction Howard Greenhalgh said in a 2010 interview that "With anything, it’s the lyrics that are everything. You pray that there are good lyrics in a track because that leads you immediately to what you’re going to do."
Greenhalgh owns Soft Target, a creative hub for commercials, digital content, photography and music videos based in London.
Post by Silke
