After spending nearly three weeks in one of our favourite places on earth, we packed our bags again, happy and pleased with the number of things we got done in this relatively short period of time. We had filmed two videos, worked on new original music, took hundreds of pictures (find them here), and got to spend at least a bit of time at the pool and exploring the island. A successful work-holiday we would call that!
Once we were back on British turf, the next challenge awaited us. Now we had to fit hundreds of hours of video footage into a 5-minute video. Having spent several days on going through and sorting the footage alone, it was clear that we could never use all our favourite scenes. Despite the fact that “Once Upon A Time” is one of the longest songs we ever recorded, there simply wasn’t enough room, and huge sacrifices had to be made 😉
So we decided to do another one of our our behind-the-scenes videos, exclusive to the MLT Club, to show you at least a bit more of the beautiful island. And to give you a peek behind the various camera lenses on how we went about exploring the territory, finding the best spots to film and capturing the strange beauty of Lanzarote.
Follow our little DIY family on a creative song writing/video-filming trip to the islands of volcanoes!
There are several ways to prepare for a video shoot.
Sometimes we go into a shoot with nothing more than a rough idea of the visual concept, sometimes we draw a storyboard of the different shots and angles, and sometimes we actually film dummy videos first to mimic and plan the final video.
In the case of “Still A Friend Of Mine” we did the latter but with Barbies … yes, you read that right, Barbie Dolls.
Since the actual day of filming for the final video involved a whole crew, other musicians, a rented theatre room, a rented piano and a very limited amount of time we wanted to be as prepared as possible to make sure we would get it all done in the few hours we had.
So we decided to pre-shoot the whole video with us as dolls to already figure out the best lighting, framing, timing and cut and then simply sent it to the film crew for reference.
Usually, when you see us in a video it’s our dad Rudi behind the camera or us filming each other, but when all 3 of us are in frame, as in the case of “Still A Friend Of Mine”, we need to hire more people. We can only imagine their faces when they first opened the Barbie video file 😉
We went online and bought the entire Barbie supply of every mother in a 50-mile radius whose kids have moved on to video games.
Now we have a worryingly large amount of loose body parts, single shoes and small plastic birthday cakes in our attic but if you’re ever specifically looking for a tan, black haired doll with green eyes and some angel wings – hit us up, we’ve probably got one.
(We counted … 96 dolls)
The two of us had way too much fun looking through everything and picking out the right stand-ins for the video. And yes, we shampooed their hair, cut and blow-dried it to make them look more like us. Guess the 8-year-olds in us got a bit too excited. While we were busy doing that, dad decided to build his own white miniature piano … out of paper:
It has pedals, moving parts and everything!
What’s that? Overkill?
Well, it now sits on our bookshelf and gets complimented by nearly every visitor. So it wasn’t only a very useful video prop but is now a fantastic conversation starter and room decor 😉 It’s actually well complementing the miniature guitars, bass and drums we got sent from one of you lovely guys.
We initially never intended to share this video with anyone, but once the MLT Club got born, it just seemed too amusingly odd not to show you. We hope you enjoyed “Still A Friend Of Mine – The Barbie Edition”.
If you want to compare it to the original, you can re-watch it here:
Along with the question for the perfect album name came another big challenge: What’s going to go on the album cover?
It wasn’t that we couldn’t think of anything. It was more that we had too many ideas and found ourselves drawing up tons of different versions and directions to go with.
Here are some ideas we had in the beginning. For the sake of brainstorming we sometimes used already existing art to mock up an idea, sometimes drawing up rough sketches from scratch:
We liked the idea of going all out on the colour. We wanted something fresh, something that represented the playful spirit of the album. The all-encompassing motto of this whole project, for both music and artwork, was “More orange, less clockwork”. None of the ideas above really hit that mark for us.
That was until we thought about taking the colour aspect, well … literally. Orange paint … Is there anything more playful, fresh, and joyous than actual orange paint? That was it! The idea alone got the kids in us all excited.Lisa went straight to Google and Photoshop and started copying random people and pixelated colour splashes together to visualise that concept. Get ready … we’ve never looked that good:
Scary, right? Haha!But that mock-up was enough to give us a good starting point and we all agreed to go ahead with this idea.Papa Rudi and Lisa went straight to work researching photographing techniques. They also needed equipment to capture such high-speed movement as flying paint droplets, so we ordered special flashes and did a lot of testing.
There are a tons of images like this on our hard drive now:
When we had finally figured out how we’d capture the perfect photos there was one last thing to decide:
Where could we do the video shoot?
We doubted any studios would let us rent the place and make such a mess. So the answer came quite naturally: Our dining room of course 😉
In the making-of video you can see what we did to prepare the room and keep all the walls and equipment clean: Lots of plastic covers and a kiddie pool to put our chairs in and collect the paint.
The shoot itself was quite the challenge. The paint got us cold very quickly and we couldn’t make many attempts before we simply were too soaked to get good looking results.
Dad and our stepmum Michaela were standing to either side of us, each with a bucket of paint in their hands. They counted: 3, 2, 1 …. and the paint came flying while dad pressed the shutter in his other hand to activate the camera and flashes.
We took about two dozen shots of the two of us, then we scraped off some more paint from the floor and did another set of photos – this time without us in it. That way we could get some design elements for the release (post-edited by Lisa):
We finally wrapped up and made a beeline for the showers, trying not to leave a trail of paint on the beige carpets! Dad and Michaela started cleaning up and we soon had our kitchen restored back to normal. We even ate dinner there that night!
Watch the whole making-of and let us know what you think! 🙂
Our album ORANGE is turning 1 today, the 29th of September, so it’s time to put on some party hats, throw confetti and blow into those party horn thingies.This year has flown by in a heartbeat but it was filled with many things ORANGE. From shooting some music videos to promoting the record to setting up new ways to let the world know about it. Lately it has mainly filled with new projects though but more of that soon …For now, let’s get back to ORANGE.
It started off innocent (“Let’s write a new album”) …
But soon turned into an ORANGE mess (the best kind) …
Ideas, sounds, fills, work, John Sebastian, guitars, practise, melodies, 60’s, a song writing trip to Lanzarote, harmonies, all-nighters, family, 2017, rhythm, a splash of orange juice … Mix and stir it well and out comes what is now sitting on our and many of your shelves, in the form of CDs and Vinyl.
Since we’re looking back on ORANGE, let’s go over some of the songs on the album:
Still A Friend Of Mine:
This is our most recent video for the song that seems to be many people’s favourite, according to the feedback we have received. “Still A Friend Of Mine” is the last track on the album and also the last one we’ve written.We’ve heard many fan theories about who this song is about and we love them all. You’re all right, because who are we to say? We have our own theory though! 😉
Waiting For The Waiter (ft. John Sebastian):
This video also celebrates its 1st birthday today. “Waiting For The Waiter” is one of two songs on the album that features John Sebastian – a living legend and wonderful man who made his name in the Lovin’ Spoonful, in Woodstock, through countless collaborations with bands like the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (and to our surprise, now: us!) and many other musical adventures.Definitely our bluesiest venture on the album:
Once Upon A Time (ft. John Sebastian):
The other song was “Once Upon A Time”, the track we originally approached John Sebastian with. When writing it we wanted it to be somewhat of an hommage to Woodstock and the spirit we associate with some of the music back then. To have John, who performed there back in ’69, play the spine-tingling bluesharp intro and solo could not have been more appropriate.We haven’t made a video for this song, so please consider getting the album to listen to the track (if you haven’t already ♥). Every purchase in our web store allows us to work on future projects and create new albums, videos and collaborations like this.
Do you have a favourite off the album? Maybe one that wasn’t a single? Let us know in a comment below! We appreciate your feedback …
We might be celebrating ORANGE’s birthday but what we really want to celebrate is all of you groovy people and every single one of you who has a copy (or a download) playing in their home, office or car. You have made ORANGE a success. It’s all fine and dandy making a record that WE like. But it’s the fact that you seem to like it too and went to the length to buy it that enables us to make more … (another hint ;-))
We hadn’t been on vacation in half a decade and we also had a new album to write – so we decided to combine the two and go on a songwriting trip to Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands. A house in the middle of nowhere, no computers, gorgeous weather, stunning scenery, healthy food, a bit of exercise and no distractions put us into creative overdrive. We got an enormous amount of work done during that stay, and most songs from ORANGE were born there or at least conceived.
Some behind-the-scenes photos of our day of shooting the video for “Still A Friend Of Mine”. 11 hours of madness, but with the help of our wonderful crew we managed to wrap up right before the piano hiring company was coming to get their white Grand Baby back. We put many weeks of preparation into the production and thankfully it all worked out great in the end. Keep your eyes peeled for a separate making-of video …
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”24″ gal_title=”2018 – Video Shoot, Still A Friend Of Mine”]
This is a collection of the many snaps we took while working away in the studio. Many of them were taken during the countless hours we spent recording, crafting and refining what was later going to become ORANGE.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”20″ gal_title=”2017 – At the Recording Studio”]
The preparations for the release were many and very varied for our whole team. Merch design & production, emails and phone calls to pressing plants, release strategies all the way down to signing all pre-ordered copies and eventually: The final countdown.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”12″ gal_title=”2017 – ORANGE, album release”]
To ring in the release of our album ORANGE we published a video for our single “Waiting For The Waiter”. 60’s legend John Sebastian (The Lovin’ Spoonful) plays blues harp on two of the tracks and when we thought about creating a video for the “Waiting For The Waiter” single, we knew he had to feature in the video as well. He flew over all the way from Woodstock NY, and we spent 5 days shooting videos, doing interviews and listening in awe to the many incredible stories he told. For the video shoot actor Carl Wharton joined in on the fun and portrayed the waiter perfectly.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”10″ gal_title=”2017 – John Sebastian Visit”]
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