‘Join the dark side’: Morningside Community Centre youth group help shoot moody music vid

It’s a scorching Saturday morning and I’m sitting on a roof in Hackney with a group of 11 – 14 year olds. “This is nothing,” boasts Mertcan, unaffected by the heat and rejecting the glass of water offered to him, “Turkey is way hotter.”

Mertcan, age 14, was one of the first members of the youth group when it started four years ago. They meet weekly in Morningside Community Centre and call themselves the Peace Seekers. Earlier this year, in addition to their normal activities of service projects, games and discussion, they produced a music video for Birthrights, an electronic band comprised of CJ Mirra and Kirk Spencer, who released their debut EP in May 2017.

The track ‘Everyone Together’ was written and recorded in early 2016 by the London-based electronic duo and signed by record label OneTwoMany. Despite the cheery sounding title, the song itself has a dark tone, with an oppressive beat and an insistent brass sample.

“The name of the song was a bit tongue in cheek. It’s not happy clap your hands,” says Mirra, “It was a particularly turbulent moment in time. Things were on the news, happening in the local community, which showed that everyone wasn’t together.”

A behind the scenes look at the shoot. Photograph: Birthrights

The musicians had sifted through ideas for the track’s video and were ready to go ahead with a proposal by director Al Mackay, who co-directed Channel 4 and Netflix series Crazy Head. But the timing didn’t work out. Instead of falling back on another director, Spencer and Mirra decided to get in touch with Badi Aiff and Louise Barco-Morgan, who run the group, to see if the youth wanted to collaborate.

In their first meeting, the youth and the band members lay down with their eyes closed and listened. After hearing the song, 13-year old Chloe opened her eyes and said “ascending” was the image that came to mind. Chris, 14, said “join the dark side”.

The group, which is part of the Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Programme offered by the Baha’i Community, wanted to focus on unity, friendship and the idea that there is no ‘us’ and ‘them’.

In the video, the kids play themselves and they are doing what they love: Mertcan plays video games, Chris is solving a rubiks cube, Chloe and her sister Naomi are dancing. Suddenly, their phones start to light up with texts warning that “they are here”.

Then there is a lot of running, which was everyone’s favourite part of the shoot. Why? Because it involved chasing the camera man, Giacomo Gex, being pulled in a trolley, borrowed (with permission) from Tesco. All the scenes were shot around Hackney and the crew adhered to a strict 10pm curfew.

Trolley dash: a low budget approach to tracking shots. Photograph: Birthrights

The chasing ends with a face off with ‘them’, on the same roof we sat on together that day.

Dressed in black and clad in balaclavas, the ‘them’ group looks ominous. “We were thinking of how people see something that is other,” says Mirra, “We picked clothes that covered their faces because the “other” is always something that you don’t see fully – we see them from far away.”

But when the balaclavas come off, the youth are face to face with themselves.

Chloe tries to explain: “The us were chasing the them, but the them were chasing the us. But they were the same person. Is that confusing?”