Prisoners1984

Between 1980 and 1983 I and one of the other members of Vida had become involved in running a Video facility in Soho, London’s film district. We were very early in the field and because of that ended up as MTV’s European stringers at one point - then we got he call from Chiat Day Los Angeles: Apple were about to launch a new computer called the Mac and a commercial was going to be directed by Ridley Scott after his success with Blade Runner and that commercial would be shown in the middle of the 1984 Super Bowl event - one time only. So would we shoot the making of the commercial for Apple and what we shot would form the basis of a campaign to hype the fact that the commercial would be shown once only and our footage would be shown thousands of times on news channels, discos, trade events in fact everywhere that could immerse the American consciousness in this new product that would change the future? Sure. When we arrived on set, in Thatchers deteriorating Britain on a massive sound stage, with a US commercials agency, several hundred extras who were recruited from the Bovver Boots agency which would give you people that’d collect debts or people of a very hard right wing persuasion - with a world renowned director and effectively an anarchist video crew - we were disoriented. I knew then that the footage should have a life outside of its intended corporate use - that the footage would speak of other things. It took me some time to edit - to find the correct form that did the whole of the above justice - and I called this “Prisoners”.