Eight moons ago, on a crisp winter evening, we made a little fire in our backyard to sit with the full moon. We ate our dinner around the fire and then made s'mores - one of Laly's favourite treats. She wrote love letters to the moon on the concrete patio with some of the fallen charcoal. While we were sitting around the fire, she began humming her song Stars, to the moon. We hadn't yet booked a time to record it in the studio but it was essentially ready for the big wide world.
While she was humming the song and dancing around the fire with her charcoal stick, inspiration came to me for her music video. I said, "Let's get some sparklers and you can dance in the moonlight while singing your song, I think this could be the video!" With a beaming smile she ran and got some sparklers, put on her dark blue jumpsuit and off we went into the night. Would we step on something slimy? Possibly, but she did not care! I filmed her with my phone while she danced to the song in her head, the vision of the music video coming to me as I filmed. I had Coldplay's Yellow in my mind as inspiration - remember the one continuous shot of Chris Martin walking in the rain on the beach as dawn broke?
We did 4 takes, and that was that! I wanted it to be as organic and playful as possible, just like her song. I had no idea if it would work but the moment was captured, and that's all that mattered for me at that moment. We giggled and laughed and it was the most wonderful memory-making time together, mother and daughter. I told her it might not be great, and it's on the phone so the quality isn't the best but she didn't care, she felt the buzz of it and knew it would become whatever it would become.
After we recorded the song in the recording studio in August, I started thinking again about how I could turn that footage into a music video. I wasn't confident about my editing skills at first - it's been over 20 years since I sat at a film editing suite at university, and technology has advanced so much since then. I decided to ask around for a video editor, and I did end up paying someone to put it together for me but I wasn't quite happy with the end result because I realised I already had a strong vision for it and needed to create it myself. So this past month while I had the time, I decided to give it a try myself. It was fun to learn a new software, expanding my photography skills into the moving world. And I am really happy with the result, it's the closest to what I envisioned that beautiful night, and even with the limited quality of the phone, not to mention it being shot at night, with no other equipment, I am really pleased with it.
It is now on you tube! I have a separate channel for Laly but it's on my account so she can't access it herself, and comments have to be modified by me before they are public so that she's as protected as possible but still able to share her creativity with the world.
I really hope you like it too, feel free to share it with your friends and family and online if you feel moved to. She's already working on her next song and it's a heart melter.
With love,
Pia xx