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Title: STAND UP

Reference number: 7832

Date: 2002

Director: d. Martin Smith

Sponsor: [ Scottish Screen, Scottish Enterprise, Channel 4, Glasgow Film Office]

Producer: [ Tracey Skelton]

Production company: [ Ben Trovato]

Sound: sound

Colour: col

Fiction: fiction

Running time: 4.05 mins

Description: Music video produced for '4 Minute Wonders' scheme, featuring the track 'Stand Up' by Smoke. In a nightmarish vision of the future, British schoolgirls appear to be undergoing terrorist training in the classroom.

Watch the full length video at director's website http://www.martinsmithonline.co.uk/martinsmithstana.html [last accessed 26/4/2010]

"Smith's video for Smoke's Stand Up, the latest product of the 4 Minute Wonders scheme, is like an angry reaction to everything he's done before. Anti-slick, anti-wide format and virtually an anti-promo, Stand Up has the discomforting quality of secretly-shot footage inside a terrorist training camp. Even more sinister and controversially, the terrorist trainees appear to be British schoolgirls. "It's an anti-war film - definitely my nightmare vision of the future," says Smith. "I couldn't help but be affected by images of war and terror, Al Jazeera Television and suicide bombers. The idea is transferred to Britain, at a time when it's normal for kids to be trained by terrorists." To create the necessary lower-than-lo-fi-effect, Smith turned to an old-school gimmick, beloved of arty film makers in the late eighties: the Fisher Price Pixelvision 2000 "toy" camcorder. The result is an eery, nearly negligible black and white image (quite how F-P thought this would appeal to tots frankly boggles the mind) that creates exactly the right effect. Producer Tracy Skelton says, "With 4 Minute Wonders videos people usually pull all the favours they can to make the £4,000 budget go as far as possible, but we decided to take a different approach." She says this was partly a reaction to their first pop video experience. "The feel and shooting style, the edit - everything had to be absolutely "wrong," says Smith. "Every aeasthetic I'd learned was chucked out of the window, but that was liberating and I think it really fits the piece. Film was too high production value, DV was too clean, too modern. I tested cameras from way back, the more broken or unconventional the better. I went with the kids' camera because I had never before seen footage more basic. It's amazing"
[information taken from article 'Smith's Pixel Terror' by David Knight, Promo Magazine. http://www.martinsmithonline.co.uk/martinsmithpromo.html, last accessed 26/4/2010]"

Formed in Glasgow in 2000, 4 Minute Wonders was the first production support scheme in the world which aimed to encourage new filmmakers to produce music videos. Providing a boost to both local filmmaking talent and independent record companies, the scheme has been a huge success producing over a dozen films in Scotland, gathering award nominations and launching the careers of a new generation of directors. It has been so successful that sister schemes based on the same format have now started to appear in other parts of the world with 4MW Wales, 4MW South Australia and 4MW Victoria already producing promos, and there are plans to expand throughout the UK, the rest of Australia and into Europe in the near future. Sweden, the Basque region of Spain and Estonia are all already in negotiations with the scheme's organisers to host their own versions of 4MW. [Information from 57th Edinburgh International Film Festival Catalogue, 2003]

Credits: Track Stand Up
Artist Smoke

[rec co/commissioner: Savalas Underground Developments/4 Minute Wonders]