Wednesday 1 February 2012

Florence shakes it out at royal Eltham Palace

For those wanting a bit more on matters royal in Eltham ... did you catch up with the fact that Florence and the Machine shot a music video at Eltham Palace last year? The video for 'Shake it out', released in October 2011, was shot at the Palace and heavily features the 1930s art deco entrance hall and the surrounding rooms - a popular choice since you may remember that Cheryl Cole also shot the video to 'Parachute' there (my post here on that one).



Even if the music is not quite your cup of tea, it's a beautifully shot video and was directed by Dawn Shadforth. It's pretty stylised, with the mannequin-like, porcelain beauty of Florence Welch, the lead singer, at its heart. Welch described the video in Rolling Stone saying, "Think of a psychedelic 1920s dress party with a demonic twist. Possession meets The Great Gatsby"

Elsewhere, she talks about filming the video at Eltham Palace: "We were kind of going for a sort of 'Gatsby at West Egg'-style house party but with maybe slightly ritualistic and sort of satanic undertones and séances. That was such a fun video to shoot, for me especially, because I had all my friends down there, and they all came and we all got to dress up and do a casual séance in this beautiful art-deco mansion. It's basically a party house; there's one room which was purely just for cutting flowers. My best friend is sitting with me in the tree at the end of the video, and we just got to hang out in a tree for a while. It was really fun."

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