21 July,2011 06:57 AM IST | | Bhairavi Jhaveri
The eight-minute video was shot in Delhi and Bangalore during the band's Eristoff Invasion India tour earlier this year
It was huge for The Prodigy to have performed in India this year as part of The Eristoff Invasion festival, organised by Motherswear, Indie music label Only Much Louder's festivals division, in collaboration with UKNY Music, a leading UK-based music and events company.
To encapsulate the same adrenaline-pumping feeling of a live concert into a video that lives up to all the hype must have been a challenge. But Paul Dugdale (or Duggers as the band calls him), the British band's photographer and video director, uses his dexterous camerawork to recreate an elevating experience.
While the film opens to the track Warrior's Dance from the group's 1997 album Fat of the Land, the video is based on one of their biggest hits from the same album, Smack My Bitch Up -- a track that an entire generation of music-lovers grew up on. To match the legendary track's highs, lows and pulsating build-up, Dugdale juxtaposes concert footage from Bangalore and Delhi with interesting, sometimes comical, and even heart-wrenching shots of a colourful India.
The camera tails Keith Flint and company walking about the streets of these cities, in crowded junctions and market places, watching a film through a bioscope, visiting an antique musical instruments store and checking out a temple in Bangalore without making any of it seem clich ufffdd. In fact, the madness of the band's music actually complements India's vibrant avatar.
Dugdale manoeuvres the camera with such a refreshing edge, zooming into autographs scrawled on fans' bare skin, cut to a variety of interesting images -- a butcher, a clock store owner, an animal-skin police bike -- each criss-crossing into a smooth edit. Dugdale is a genius at capturing the crowd dancing, jumping, head-banging with absolute abandon -- the video makes you wish you were there, enjoying every bit of that stark, raving madness.u00a0
Duration 8.10 minutes
Directed by Paul Dugdale
Watch it on www.youtube.com/prodigychannel
