Hammer & Tongs

Garth Jennings in 2008

Nick Goldsmith in 2008

Hammer & Tongs is a production team from Great Britain , consisting of the director Garth Jennings (* 1972 in Essex ) and the film producer Nick Goldsmith (* 1971). Dominic Leung, who mostly works as editor , was named by Jennings as the third member, but Hammer & Tongs are mostly perceived as a duo by the public. After becoming best known for their music videos, they made the films The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) and The Son of Rambow (2007).

Career

Jennings and Goldsmith met when they were both attending Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design . There they studied graphic design . In the early 1990s, they made their first music video for the track Way In My Brain for the SL2 electronic project . This was followed by productions for Ash , Pulp and Eels, among others . Originally, the directing work was either done by the entire team or Jennings, Goldsmith and Leung each shot alone, which is why Hammer & Tongs shot several videos at the same time for a while. Since the late 1990s, Goldsmith has hardly been active as a director and the other two directors under their own names.

The 1999 video for Blurs Coffee & TV had a budget of roughly £ 90,000 to £ 100,000, making it Hammer & Tongs' largest project to date. It tells the story of an anthropomorphic milk carton that goes in search of the missing person depicted on it. The video won the NME Award and the MTV Europe Music Award as best video of the year. The artists who subsequently had several videos made by Hammer & Tongs include Fatboy Slim , Supergrass , Badly Drawn Boy and Beck .

In 2005, the team's first feature film was released, the Douglas Adams filming The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . With an estimated production budget of $ 50 million, the film grossed just over $ 100 million worldwide. This was followed in 2007 by Der Sohn von Rambow , who won the audience award at the Locarno Film Festival in 2008.

In 2010, a collection of music videos and short films was released on DVD as The Hammer & Tongs Collection .

Music videos (selection)

1995: The Mutton Birds - Dominion Road
1996: Menswear - Being Brave
1997: Del Amitri - Medicine
1997: Ash - A Life Less Ordinary
1997: Pulp - Help the Aged
1998: Moloko - The Flipside
1998: Marcy Playground - Saint Joe on the School Bus
1998: Pulp - A Little Soul
1998: Eels - Last Stop: This Town
1999: Eels - Cancer for the Cure
1999: Blur - Coffee & TV
1999: Fatboy Slim - Right Here, Right Now
1999: Travis - Driftwood
1999: Supergrass - Pumping On Your Stereo
2000: Badly Drawn Boy - Disillusion
2000: Fatboy Slim & Macy Gray - Demons
2001: Zero 7 - I Have Seen
2001: REM - Imitation of Life
2001: Badly Drawn Boy - Spitting in the Wind
2002: Badly Drawn Boy - Silent Sigh
2003: Beck - Lost Cause
2004: Beck - Lonesome Tears
2005: Supergrass - Low C
2005: Beck - Hell Yes
2006: Hot Chip - Boy From School
2008: Vampire Weekend - A-Punk
2009: Vampire Weekend - Cousins
2011: Radiohead - Lotus Flower

Filmography

2005: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
2007: The son of Rambow
2016: Sing

Web links

http://www.tongsville.com/
Garth Jennings in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Nick Goldsmith in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c Nick Dawson: GARTH JENNINGS, “SON OF RAMBOW” , filmmakermagazine.com, May 2, 2008
↑ ^a ^b Tom Fogg: interview with hammer and tongs> page one , netribution.co.uk, 2000 (accessed October 20, 2011)
↑ Ambrose Heron: Interview: Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith on The Hammer and Tongs Collection , filmdetail.com, November 19, 2010
↑ Tom Fogg: interview with hammer and tongs> page two , netribution.co.uk, 2000 (accessed October 20, 2011): "How did you manage to do 50 odd videos in 3 years? - N. - Well, when we started out the three of us were a directing team of sorts [...]. G. - It was a great time and no one really knew which of us they were going to get, there was a much higher turnover of videos because it was all under the Hammer & Tongs name. N. - We would tend to decide who would do which job on their style or who had the original idea [...]. I've stopped directing now and Dominic and Garth are directing under their own names and have been for two years now "
↑ H2G2 at Box Office Mojo, accessed October 20, 2011
^ Locarno Festival 2008 at IMDb, accessed on October 20, 2011

[FMM-1] Nick Dawson: GARTH JENNINGS, “SON OF RAMBOW” , filmmakermagazine.com, May 2, 2008

[Fogg-2] Tom Fogg: interview with hammer and tongs> page one , netribution.co.uk, 2000 (accessed October 20, 2011)

[Audio-3] Ambrose Heron: Interview: Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith on The Hammer and Tongs Collection , filmdetail.com, November 19, 2010

[4] Tom Fogg: interview with hammer and tongs> page two , netribution.co.uk, 2000 (accessed October 20, 2011): "How did you manage to do 50 odd videos in 3 years? - N. - Well, when we started out the three of us were a directing team of sorts [...]. G. - It was a great time and no one really knew which of us they were going to get, there was a much higher turnover of videos because it was all under the Hammer & Tongs name. N. - We would tend to decide who would do which job on their style or who had the original idea [...]. I've stopped directing now and Dominic and Garth are directing under their own names and have been for two years now "

[5] H2G2 at Box Office Mojo, accessed October 20, 2011

[6] Locarno Festival 2008 at IMDb, accessed on October 20, 2011