Tag Archives: 8-bit-ninjas

Video Shoot

Had a really entertaining day on Friday with Andy & Sam from the 8-Bit Ninjas and a whole host of actors & actresses shooting part of the video for ‘Disco Terror’ in Digbeth, Birmingham.
As part of the 2weeks2MakeItBrum competition, the 8-Bit Ninjas had been paired with filmakers ‘Emerald Void’. Having already completed a day shooting various scenes on the Thursday, the main event for the Friday was to take place on a derelict site near the Custard Factory in Birmingham. This was to be the scenes involving all the ‘extras’ that had been recruited for the day.

An early start saw us head to New St station to pick up Liam who had travelled down from Newcastle to be one of the main characters in the video.
A brief stop at Tesco Express to stock up on baby wipes and water was a brief diversion and gave Andy C plenty of comedy material to start off the day! (Don’t anybody mention ‘Meal Deal’ to Andy again…)

With Liam now safely accosted it was off to Digbeth ..and the joy of finding somewhere to park,….. followed by a visit to a greasy spoon for a bit of breakfast.
There was a sudden realisation that Liam was not suitably attired for the part he was due to play, so it was a dash up to Primark in the Bull Ring for some cheap clothes before heading off back to the site to meet up with the film and makeup crew.

First task was to get Liam into his custom hi-tech suit…

Meanwhile a steady stream of volunteer actors and actresses started to turn up and were lovingly dispatched to the temporary makeup area for a bit of ‘zombification’.

The day then unfolded as scene after scene was committed to Digicam, people crawled in the dust, spouted fake blood and stood patiently ‘between scenes’ getting well and truly sunburnt. Meanwhile Liam, without a hint of complaint, was treated to a good 6 or 7 hours standing around wrapped up in his robot suit come sauna.

There is a nice little slideshow of some images here…

The Zombies were brilliant. The make up was awesome and very effective and everyone took on the parts really well. The film makers really seemed to have a good understanding of what they wanted to achieve and were very well organised.
The day wrapped up nicely, the importance of sufficient ‘baby wipes’ was highlighted in the clean up operation and everyone had a good time.

The competition closes this Friday and the video is now in production/editing. Personally, I had a wonderful time, met some interesting people and I can’t wait to see the finished video.

8-Bit Ninjas, The Varsity Wolverhampton.

The 8-Bit Ninjas played the Varsity in Wolverhampton last night (19th March).

Four bands were on in total. Bad Apes opened the gig, lets just say they were “experimental” and left quite a few punters a bit bemused. Some people even thought it was just the soundcheck. I sincerely hope they have day jobs.

The 8-Bit Ninjas were on second . They opened with ‘Theme from an 8-Bit Dojo’ before introducing themselves and got an extremely good reception. The sound quality was very much improved over the last gig, despite some early problems with the monitor speakers which meant the guys couldn’t actually hear themselves to start off with.


It was a shorter set due to only having a 30 minute slot, so ‘Go’ was dropped in order to compact the set a bit. ‘Pokemon Face’ was well received when it was anounced

The appearance of Clive* and his dance interpretation during ‘Shiny Spaceship’ was appreciated by the crowd.
Quite how someone can dance in two layers of clothing and an overcoat is beyond me!

The night was completed firstly with ‘Crimson Joy’ who were popular and certainly knew how to work and interact with the audience, even roping in ‘Susan the Dancing Unicorn’ into their own set.

‘From The Get Go’ completed the line up, rather crowded onto the stage, they bought their own legion of ‘Slam Dancers’ who pretty much cleared the front part of the room as most people actually wanted to avoid have broken limbs. Even ‘Clive’ was knocked flying at one point.

Overall a good night. Especially for the ‘Ninja’s. Good Times.

Some Photos of the Gig can be found here: Photos
or here

* Clive is not his real name, well actually it might be, I’ve no idea who he is.

8-Bit Ninjas @ The Hang Up

8-Bit Ninjas, The Arcadian Kicks & Corelli. The Hang Up, Walsall 5th March 2010

I managed to catch some of the 8-Bit Ninjas on a small camcorder. I’ve put some up on Youtube and an embedded link here

It was a difficult venue to film at due to extremely low light levels, hence the footage has a ‘graininess’ to it. Still, I’m reasonably pleased that we got something better than was already out there. If I can catch another one with better lighting I will do. I shall be booking them to appear at a private party sometime in late May early June so watch this space.
I’m still cutting & editing the rest of the footage and will put that up soon.

It was a good night, turnout wasn’t as good as the first gig, and the sound was not up to the same standard. This was more to do with the P.A. and the mixing rather than the Ninjas. The 2nd band, The Arcadian Kicks were very good but also suffered some P.A and Microphone problems.

A great night…The 8-Bit Ninjas have another gig at the Varsity in Wolverhampton on 19th March. I am hoping for more soon.