Notes from the field: Imogen Heap

Chris Roe, who produced, shot and edited tonight's Embedded with Imogen Heap, has made pieces for Current Music about Sole, Sparta and Crispin Glover. He followed Imogen for some early promotion of "Ellipse," online interactions with fans, and the first live performances of her complex electronic songs live.

Most Embedded featured artists were shot by a small team, usually two or three people total. But Chris works alone, so his time with Imogen is almost entirely captured in his work—and some behind the scenes musings he sent over this week:

Everyone calls her Immi but I never did because it felt like a friend thing. When we met up at KCRW—one of the few radio stations in the states that actually played her musi—she had already been followed by cameras for two years during the making of "Ellipse." She was quite used to being on camera. With some artists, it can take a little bit for them to get used to having a camera in their face. I shoot alone, running sound on my hip, so I think that helps people loosen up quickly. There's really no pretentiousness to Imogen. She's an easy person to establish a connection with and it quickly became a goal of mine to portray that in the piece.

Imogen had just learned how to drive before she came to the states. The first day of filming I was trailing her rented black mustang convertible, and while there were a few close calls she did really well. LA is not the kind of place you want to throw a new driver. Later that day it came time to drive out to Sun Valley in search of a screechy instrument called the waterfone. After I had shot enough b-roll of her driving (and singing), she cranked up The Knife so loud it was almost uncomfortable and we drove the rest of the way getting blasted by the sun and "Silent Shout." Having been a fan of her music before the shoot this was a bit of a surreal moment for me.

I love the shot in the piece where she pulls the bow across the waterfone; it makes a terrible sound, there's a pause and she says half to herself "beautiful." If I had to choose one shot in the piece that described her the most that one would be it—strangely I didn't cut it in until my last pass of the waterfone segment; shame on me. We wandered around this place that had thousands of other instruments and it was quickly clear she was in her element.

On our way back, I had about 30 minutes to get my main interview and get her back to the hotel so she could hop on a plane back to England. I had intended on finding a space inside the instrument warehouse, but it just didn't work. We ended up at Griffith park here in LA and found a tree to put her under to escape the heat. While it's a bit bright and contrasty, the interview ended up being in front of this great yellow (i.e. dead) grass. I felt like this was typical Heap, the serendipity that lead us to this spot. It was perfect and i think ended up being unique compared what is the usual interview setup. It only pops up here or there in the piece but when it does it makes a nice statement.

Like our Embedded shoot with Cold War Kids, our "just along for the ride" approach hit a snag when the artist's own health began to show the wear and tear of trave.

Maybe Embedded is jinxed. The same thing that happened on the Cold War Kids shoot happened to me. Imogen came back to the states to start her tour in California. We were scheduled to shoot the second show of the tour, but by the time she arrived she had gotten very sick and had to cancel a show for one of the first times in her career. So the second show became the first show, and because it was the first time they had put on this stage performance everyone was very tense. She was as gracious as ever but the evening was really building to a crescendo and the shoot became all about that. She spent hours before the show rehearsing in the dark behind the curtain programming and reprogramming her triggers. My goal in that segment was to try and show what it requires to pull these things together and how genuine Imogen was even during what was a very stressful night.

Watch an exclusive sneak peek of the episode over at Spinner.com, then tune in tonight at 11pm EST/8pm PST.

Other behind the scenes blog posts:

+ Notes from the field: Cold War Kids

+ Beyond Embedded: Even rock stars get sick