{"id":240,"date":"2009-04-28T11:55:20","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T11:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/?p=240"},"modified":"2022-09-08T09:03:13","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T09:03:13","slug":"ben-lee-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/ben-lee-2\/","title":{"rendered":"BEN LEE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We were dead tired heading into our Ben Lee session. We&#8217;d been shooting non-stop since Sydney Festival, sometimes as many as four bands a week, so we were pretty drained.&nbsp; We weren&#8217;t going to miss the chance to shoot Ben Lee, but we weren&#8217;t very prepared &#8211; instead of coming up with a great location, we&#8217;d made the easiest plan we could think of:&nbsp; we&#8217;d walk through the park next door to Ben&#8217;s hotel.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:58% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/4370229?h=f13d740841&amp;badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\/embed\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/4370229\">Ben Lee: What&#8217;s So Bad<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/shoottheplayer\">shoottheplayer.com<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an understatement to say that meeting Ben energised us. He was friendly, funny, and completely without pretension. As we strolled into the park, Ben greeted everyone he met with a friendly hello, and we began to suspect this wasn&#8217;t going to be just any shoot.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:58% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/4343406?h=91c78f9453&amp;badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"Ben Lee: Kids\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/4343406\">Ben Lee: Kids (By MGMT)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Then magic happened.&nbsp; Ben suggested a sing-a-long with a group of schoolgirls sitting on the sidelines of a soccer game. After a quick debate about whether we&#8217;d get in trouble, we decided to go for it.&nbsp; The girls recognised Ben immediately, and he soon had them doing a call-and-response version of his song Surrender. The girls were thrilled, Ben was having a blast, and we all left smiling.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:58% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/4344605?h=6271d071ba&amp;badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"Ben Lee: Surrender\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/4344605\">Ben Lee: Surrender<\/a><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;d forgotten our tiredness, and the shoot just kept getting better. As we crossed a muddy field, a few other girls stopped their cricket game and ran over to tell Ben that he was their favourite musician.&nbsp; Ben offered to play them a song, and the girls deliriously offered up three minutes of hilarious improvised dance moves as Ben sang.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:58% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/4342719?h=cd7ac2e6cf&amp;badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"Ben Lee: Ben Lee\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/4342719\">Ben Lee: Ben Lee (by The Ataris)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>There was no stopping him.&nbsp; He was completely spontaneous, open to all possibilities, and his enthusiasm was infectious and put everyone at ease.&nbsp; Ben sang a cover of Sebadoh&#8217;s Brand New Love to a dog; charmed a passing woman into letting him sing to her boyfriend over her mobile phone; and gave us a gorgeous version of MGMT&#8217;s Kids.&nbsp; It was a real joy seeing how happy his music made people.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:58% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/4342896?h=027bbe3fbe&amp;badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"Ben Lee: Brand New Love\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/4342896\">Ben Lee: Brand New Love (by Sebadoh)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Together we managed to capture five songs in 45 minutes &#8211; a record! &#8211; and we left Ben&#8217;s hotel on a total high, with the knowledge that, for an hour, Ben and his music had made the park a nicer place. This is exactly what Shoot the Player is all about.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Jonathan &amp; Amelia<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ben-lee.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-wplink-edit=\"true\">www.ben-lee.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We were dead tired heading into our Ben Lee session. We&#8217;d been shooting non-stop since Sydney Festival, sometimes as many as four bands a week, so we were pretty drained.&nbsp; We weren&#8217;t going to miss the chance to shoot Ben Lee, but we weren&#8217;t very prepared &#8211; instead of coming up with a great location, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":985,"href":"https:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shoottheplayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}