It's 16 years since Vaughan Arnell created the classic video for Robbie Williams 'Angels'. Now he's gone and remade the video for Olly Murs with a knowing cameo from Robbie himself.
It was an interesting video for me to edit. I started by cutting Robbie's 'Angels' video to Olly's track a week before the shoot so that Vaughan and his team had a template from which to recreate the video shot for shot. Olly's track is a minute shorter than 'Angels' so I had to try and keep the feeling and flow of the original whilst losing 60 seconds of material, concentrating on the iconic shots that we associate with Angels, the ring in the sand, the motorbike and not forgetting the chopper!
Another little obstacle to overcome was that the original city location had been demolished, however the Barbican provided an ample replacement with its straight lines and angular geometry giving us the same feel as the original.
When it came to editing the new original material, I started by replacing my template I'd created the week before shot for shot or as close as I could. With this in place and now requiring extra space for the scene when Olly meets Robbie it was now essential to rebalance the video slightly to make sure that the video worked as a standalone piece for Olly as well as being an homage to 'Angels'.
16 years is a long time in music videos but a good video is timeless and hopefully this homage proves it.