Hateful Chains

 Ok, so Hello, Hi, We Have Been Filming Again!

I got a flu after the spending the weekend outside filming, so I'm sitting at the couch now, listening to Penderecki's symphony (which might be the next great love of mine among the classical contemporary composers. Well, he's dead, so not so contemporary, but anyway...) (Reminds me so much of Shostakovits somehow)

So, my bathroom and all the clothes there are full of sand and they smell like smoke, and while I am ill and at home, I'll still have to get that laundry pile smaller today. And how'd that happen? Well, again I had some ambitious thoughts and ideas about a music video and decided to do the whole costume process myself, in addition to writing the basic script and performing on the video myself. Oh my, but what can you do... At least this time I chose not to sew anything.

There were several other things and items to be acquired or simply on the checklist: food, snacks, wood, petroleum, coffee, warm clothes, blankets, a boombox for audio, blankets, towels, what else? Camera, phone...

The first parts of the video were to be filmed on a beach, actually an abandoned sand pit with a beautiful clear watered pool at the bottom. There was a place for fire which we used to our advantage, and magnificent rocks and sandy walls surrounding the pit, with a forest area on the other side of the pool. It was already impressive in daylight, and by night time with some artificial lighting the pool looked absolutely magical!

 

While it was still light, all the dancers and actors participating gathered there, got info on the basic filming plan and got their clothes, which were either from their own closets or ones I had been buying from thrift stores the during the previous week. The general idea was, that there would be a group of hippie/bohemic people (except for me, I was my goth self ) around a camp fire on the beach, telling stories and having a good time. When the daylight wanes their movements and dancing becomes odd and a bit crazy, until there's a lunatic house on the beach.

The clothes I acquired were mostly cotton and wool and other natural fabrics, the reason for this was fire safety. See, although natural fibres do catch fire, they at least won't melt onto you, unlike synthetic fibres. The style was floral, hippie, bohemic, which is mostly found in summer clothing. That's why underneath these quite thin fabrics we had to wear good amounts of wool and warm clothes. I wore my black gown and underneath an underskirt, stockings, woollen socks etc... Luckily it wasn't freezing and beside the fire it was actually very cozy, although the cold did start to creep in later in the night. 

We did the group scenes around the camp fire first while there still was some daylight, from different angles and distances. Around the fire we had some blankets to sit on and also to act as emergency fire extinguishers in case somebody would actually catch fire. While it would be perhaps unlikely to catch fire simply by sitting around it, there were other people involved with a higher risk of that.

When the light had gone it was time to introduce the fire arts. There were two people, one with fire fans and the other with sticks, bois, and nunchakus. He also blew fire. It was already too dark to see anything outside the light so artificial lighting was prepared too. For that we had some really efficient led lights from Turkuaudio. With these we could light up the pool too. In these lights the fire arts were performed. They were filmed separately and combined with dancers. Even from a distance the movement and blowing fire looked awesome, up close even more impressive. I'm confident that there will be a good amount of that stuff in the video.

After group scenes and fire stuff it was time to film each individual with their crazy movement and dancing. Other than the camp fire and the fire arts we also made use of the beautiful rock structures as a background scene, which in coloured lighting looked quite enchanting. In this part I also marked some places on the dancers bodies for the animation artist's later use. What will be animated shall remain a secret for now, for it wouldn't be fun to know everything in advance, would it?

Among the last scenes to be filmed was the craziest group dancing, the group passed out in the sand and one fearless actress walking into the pool of October temperature water with her clothes on. Not me, I couldn't, but she is an extreme model after all, so she had the guts. She told me it wasn't even the coldest water she's been into. After her stunt we got her quickly into some dry clothes and filmed the final scenes with a slight hurry, because the cameraman was actually getting a bit cold, as was the driver, who didn't join us at the fire side...

After the final shot it was time to wrap things up, find all the missing stuff in the pitch black dark with the help of the led lights, extinguish the fire with care and pack everything in the cars. Most people had a ride of their own and we took the fire artists and their equipment (quite smelly at this point!) in our car and went to sit in a pub for a while before going to sleep...

I humbly wish to thank everyone that participated and helped us to realize the filming of this first part of our music video, whether you were on the video itself or working in the background. This couldn't have been done without you!

Your's truly, Flora