BEHIND THE SCENES OF IT GETS BETTER
Before I dive into the project, let me give you a quick snippet of how my director, Nick Vigue and I met
We both went to Emerson College, but I was introduced to Nick and through one of my best friends and roommate, Suzie Hicks. We had just moved to LA in Spetember of 2018 and through a Halloween party (we were young and full of energy). I'll never forget when he showed up to our front door as a camp counselor and said "Hey! I'm Camp Counselor Nick" and bounced around the house with the kind of energy that would match a golden retriever. We got to talking and instantly vibed. He is an incredible photographer as well as filmmaker, and we had planned to one day make something together.
Over the next year, we connected with a couple photo shoots but every time spoke about how this would be the pre-cursor to a music video.
Photos by Nick Vigue:
It takes an incredible amount of brain power and more importantly, FUNDS to put together a music video. The average music video for independent artists can range anywhere from 7K- 25K. And if you have a studio behind you, it only goes up from there. Michael Jackson's music video "Scream" was $7,000,000, so you can imagine the variety of budget that can fill up a 3 minute song.
Nick and I knew we working with little to nothing of a budget. So finagling ways to save money was quite a jump rope. He does this for a living, so we did our best to try and plan my shoots in between other shoots where he already had gear to get around renting equipment.
With a freelance schedule as well as working my two jobs, the scheduling got tough. Not to mention pulling off the main idea we had for the video, which was traveling to various and vastly different landscapes. We had two failed attempts where something fell through and one day where I was even in my car getting ready to meet him and his main camera literally BROKE. It was a lot to try to pull together. Then the pandemic hit. Fast forward to August 2020, productions are picking up again. And another small detail: Nick is moving to Amsterdam.
There is something quite amazing that happens when you have a small window to take a leap. It is very reminiscent of that saying "when you want things done, invite company over" . Except in this case, your director is moving to Europe. We met up for coffee and laid everything out. Budget, crew, shots, concept, even down to what each phrase evoked. Then scheduling that with what other projects he had, we looked at each other and saw there were 2 days we could get this big idea done.
Slides from our original concept
