anyone? ?:(?

OK, here's what I'd do to achieve this effect:

First, a lot of it is accomplished through lighting (as is usually the case). Notice the dark, harsh shadows. You can get on your way towards this sort of effect by keeping the light slightly behind your talent, or off to the side (you could get some cool double-shadow effects by pointing two key lights at the talent from opposite directions). I would keep the use of reflectors to a minimum, as they tend to diffuse the light and create softer shadows. Just do some experimentation to come up with a look you like.

It also appears to me that a bunch of these shots have been made from greenscreen composites (crowd, singer, background were all shot separately and later combined), although I'm not quite sure why this would have been done. You probably don't need to worry about that part.

The color cast would then (most likely) be added digitally, perhaps as well as a gradient filter to darken the edges of the frame. I can't really say how you would do this until I know how you'll be editing the video (if you're stuck with something like Windows Movie Maker or iMovie, you may just have to stick to doing all this in-camera with lens filters, otherwise you can probably get a good result digitally).

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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my vodcast on iTunes: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=96931870
and my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com

I say use a color grading program, like FXHome's Composite Lab.

?url? http://fxhome.com/compositelab/compositelab-overview.html?/url?

It's really as easy as buying that, and putting a filter over your movie. You could request that color filter on their forums... or look around in here to see if there's one like it that you like:

?url? http://fxhome.com/presets/presetlist.php?/url?
(Click the Grading section on the left hand menu)

Good luck!

Thank you so much both of you, youve given me a lot of help!

I take it the camera should be ok?

I am using Adobe Premiere Pro just to answer your question.

Thanks again.

Yes, your camera should work fine (just be sure to set your controls to full manual). Premiere Pro I'm sure is powerful enough for this sort of project without you needing to buy any other software.

One trick you might want to try to get a bit of a vignette is to make a track above your video track, drop in a radial gradient (white in the center to black around the edges), and set the blending mode to "multiply." this should give you some darkened edges that should help your project look similar to the video you linked to.

Thanks agingeri! much appreciated!

Im quite new at this and have been playing around on premiere pro for the last hour trying to figure it out. Ive made a gradiant in photoshop after failing in premiere pro i then imported that but there is no sign of changing the blending mode as in photoshop.

Ive looked in the effects etc. where is it?! and how do i do it?!!

sorry for the idiocy! ?:)?

I haven't used Premiere since the Premiere 6.5 days, so I may not be of much help. I think once you have the gradient in a second track above your video track, you should just be able to right-click it and find a 'blending mode' submenu or something. That's how it works in Final Cut, anyway.

-----------------
Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my vodcast on iTunes: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=96931870
and my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com

I haven't gotten a chance to actually test this out to make sure it works. But I believe in Premiere you can get the multiply blend mode by dropping a Multiply Key on the clip which is located under Keying under the Video Effects drop down in the Effects panel. I'm using Premiere Pro 1.5 so this may not be the same for you if your using a diffrent version.