Tuesday 11 December 2012

Making "Run My Way" with Ruth Bioletti






How did you come up with the concept of the music video? it seems very cinematic?

The Run My Way video is a crazy mix of my love of the films by the great Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni and Hollywoods Roman Polanski.Its smothered with a big dollop of my romantic/realism imagery, mixed together with an alternative movie vibe...all propelled by the high octane lyrics of Ms Volita Neo Kalashnikov ...yeah thats it in a nutshell, I think.  
So how long did it take to create the video and who was involved and where was it shot?
Run My Way was filmed in Auckland, New Zealand a beautiful and exotic place in the South Pacific, beaches everywhere! Filming took five days and film editing four. The video is very intimate and sensitive and there was only myself, Volita and Nicolus Byron working on it. The first day on set I spent 3hrs filming Volita in the bath alone, just her and I. Its a pretty unusual thing for a director of a rock video to ask a musician to do but she was brilliant and brought a lot of attitude to those frames. On day two there was a cyclone in town but we had to film the beach scenes. Volita had to brave freezing water temperatures and gale force winds. We had to cut out all the frames of her shivering..but I must say the rough waves were dramatic and really added to the end product! The next day the weather was beautiful and sunny which is very Auckland at the moment!

How did you come up with the concept of the music video? it seems very cinematic ?

How did I come up with the concept for  Run My Way, I don't know ( laughs) um...my kids say that I've watched too many film festival movies! Seriously I think that there is some truth to that...I like more challenging theatre, more alternative than the mainstream type of movie. I just wanted to do a little film rather than the typical lip-sync affair that you usually get with music videos. I didn't know how it was going to look and we did film some lip sync footage but it didn't fit into the over all look and we decided not to use it. I love the work of Michelangelo Antonioni and Roman Polanski and this is probably why it looks cinematic, their work has filtered through my brain and left its mark on this video ( laughs).

Was there any important underlining message to the video in terms of imagery?

The underlining message of the video? Well...I thought that it was self explanatory until a male friend message me and said that he couldn't make any sense of it so I better say something for those people that need me to decode it! What can I say, I like the interplay between couples and in this case between a man and a woman. Volita of the Neo Kalashnikovs is the songwriter of Run My Way.I spent about four hours talking with her about the song and what she was intending to convey to the listener.It became apparent to me that this song was a love story and that there was a series of dichotomies throughout.

It amazes me how much depth there was in Run My Way, in fact many of her songs are stories, where characters are living out their lives, almost like a novel but compressed into a three or four minute song form. Maybe this why the mini movie video really suited Run My Way, I could represent her lyrics through the use of cinematic images and tell the story of two lovers who are passionate about each other but who inevitably come to that crossroads of, ' where to now ' point.

I split the scenes into opposites like man/woman, love/hate, together/alone, modernity/nature, fast/slow and so on and found the images that reflected these states. The smashing of the mirror is pivotable, I used that image like short hand, to quickly communicate the essence of the conflict that was brewing up for this couple and how serious that it was and that it was make or break time for them. The following scene of the male character Jeremiah where he shaves, is my way of conveying the internal dilemma inside him and his growth as a lover. He shaves off his beard and becomes more open to her and her desire to more the relationship to the next level. These are real life issues for people in relationships and I like to use symbolism to express this because you only have three or four minutes to do so when you are talking about a rock video. 

What music videos are in the pipeline with you and The Neos?

Anymore videos for The Neokalasnikovs? Ha...that depends if they want me back again! I don't know but I would love to do another one  for them sometime. I would really like to see Heartstrings come to life but that would be another complex video because there is a lot going on in that song too, another love story but a bit more tortured. I don't know if it will have the same happy ending ( laughs) as Run My Way!

Get "Run My Way" Here instantly for free:     http://www.mediafire.com/?o58i803sulne38t





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