UK: British rock band, Queen, produce a series of short films

Record ID: 245746

  • Title: UK: British rock band, Queen, produce a series of short films
  • Date: 31st October 1995
  • Summary: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (NOVEMBER 1, 1995) (REUTERS) SCENE FROM "TOO MUCH LOVE WILL KILL YOU" FILM BEING SHOT
  • Embargoed: 15th November 1995 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
  • City:
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA3F8FQS77ITULU0XH2GQBM2ZQR
  • Story Text: The rock group Queen have joined forces with the British Film Institute (BFI) in a unique new venture which will see the production of a series of short films to support the group's new album.
    Due out on November 6, "Made In Heaven" features the final songs written and recorded by Queen's late singer, Freddie Mercury and the group before his death from AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) in November, 1991.
    The single from the album, "Heaven For Everyone", has already entered the charts and is currently at number two in Britain.
    Queen are widely credited with producing the seminal pop promotional video, with "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 1975, a film which featured special effects, at a time when most bands were content with using pictures of themselves in performance to illustrate their songs.
    In an endeavour to find an innovative way of presenting the songs on their new album "Made In Heaven" visually, Queen approached the BFI and proposed commissioning a series of short films with new directors.
    BFI's Head of Production, Ben Gibson said, "It was a chance for us to get huge audiences for the film makers through the Queen tracks, and also to participate in an experiment in which Queen were saying they'd actually like to re-invigorate the promo (promotional video) and get something new into it", adding that the films would each have their own point, texture and message. Gibson said that he hoped that they would be released for cinema viewing as well as being available as a video, a project that is still in the planning stage.
    Seven to ten short films will be made, each illustrating the feeling and sense of the individual album tracks. The series will be completed in the spring of 1996.
    The traditional promotional video for the single "Heaven For Everyone" which was directed by David Mallet, features images of graffitti by Queen fans expressing their feelings of loss for Mercury and pictures of the singer superimposed over fantasy scenes depicting heaven.
    The director of the BFI/Queen Productions-sponsored film for the same track, Simon Pummell, chose to feature the performance artist Stelarc in his work. In the film, Stelarc uses a robotic "third hand" to symbolise a new era in which machines and man combine to work together. The robotic hand itself was made at a Japanese medical laboratory to Stelarc's design and it is controlled by sensors which pick up his muscle contractions and turn them into movement. Pummell said that he thought his film presented a strange image of somebody's view of utopia, which he finds to be in keeping with the feeling of the music.
    Pummell is currently shooting another film for the project, based on a track from the album called "Too Much Love Will Kill You".
    This track inspired Pummell to tell a story about an old lady who is thinking about her youth, when her boyfriend had himself tattooed for her.
    "In the film you see the dancing young couple after they've quarrelled and made up. They slowly transform into an old couple, which seemed to have some of the sense of memories and loss that the track's about", Pummell explained.
    Work on the "Made in Heaven" album began in the latter part of Freddie Mercury's life, and it was his wish that band members Roger Taylor, Brian May and John Deacon finish the recordings. The album was four years in the making.
    Containing ten new tracks, the album features the last song written by Mercury, "A Winter's Tale", along with his final vocal track on the song he co-wrote with Brian May, "Mother Love".
    It has been almost five years since the release of the last Queen album, "Innuendo" in February 1991. One of the biggest-selling rock groups of all time, Queen have sold in excess of 130 million records worldwide.
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