NIK MORRIS
Last Days of Rome (2011)
A music video for the first single from singer/songwriter James Harker's debut album 'The Red Room', to be released in 2012
James and I worked closely to plan this video for what is certainly my favorite song from his soon-to-be-released album. We started talking about the video when the album was still in production, and collaborated to produce a video campaign showing rehearsals and interviews for the video on crowd-sourcing finance site IndieGoGo, where James raised $1500 to finish the audio work on the album.
Working with James to get a great performance in this video was a pleasure, we spent a long time in the run-up to the production talking about the emotions and experiences that went into the song, and how that might translate into a story. Indeed, I first encountered James as an actor, and you might have been one of the thousands who enjoyed his performance in the title role of of 'TONY! The Blair Musical' by Chris Bush and Ian McCluskey, which recently secured itself in posterity in the Telegraph’s ‘Five Great Political Plays’. After two sell-out runs at the Edinburgh Fringe, London performances, a brief UK tour - and the sequel 'Tony of Arabia' - James' days at No.10 are now behind him as he concentrates on his music.
"It began as a few ideas about all the different elements of a break-up; I practised; I dragged some friends together; I found a studio; I kept working at it and working at it, fine-tuning the lyrics and melodies, finding new instruments, burning many candles at both ends, and pushing my friends to their limits." - James Harker
Watch the music video
'Last Days of Rome' was released as a single on November 21st 2011:Production Credits
- Producer, Director, DP:
- Nik Morris
- Art Director & Makeup:
- Cecily Rose Blench
- Assistant Directors:
- Josh Hatfield
- Sarah Breese
- Production Assistants:
- Neil Arden
- Sashika Sullivan
- Cast:
- James Harker
- Francesca Murray-Fuentes
- Natasha Long
- Ian McCluskey
- Chris Bush
- Virginia Althen
- Cat Armitage
- Jonathan Carr
- Gareth Prescott
- Sashika Sullivan
- Dan Clements
- Georgina Brown
- Josh Giles