You probably know that I love photography - you're even on Carryn Clicks PHOTOGRAPHY right now. Well recently I've been expanding my field of interest to include videography as well.
After building up my confidence behind a video camera, I've just reached a milestone: the first music video filmed solely by me.
My partner is South African folk pop artist Rowan Stuart, and he just released the first single from his upcoming 6th album. The song is called 'Into The Heart Of Life' and has a theme of true friendship.
Rowan had some ambitious ideas for the video, involving actors and multiple setups, but since we were leaving for a tour in a short amount of time, we decided to make the video more of a documentary-style piece about Rowan and two of his real-life best friends in their natural habitats.
Lachlan and Andy are both long-time friends of Rowan's and were both very keen to be involved in the project.
Lachlan has cerebral palsy, but has improved the extent of his disability through taekwondo training and fitness. We decided to film some of his daily workouts and weapons training, and Rowan asked him to teach him a few techniques with a weapon from the Far East called a yawara.
Andy is a multi-instrumentalist who has played music with Rowan for many years. He loves old guitars and electronics, coffee and reading. We filmed him showing off some of his favourite guitars, amps and gear that he has lying around.
We invited the guys over for some pizza, Uno, music and gaming. I tried to film almost everything, when I wasn't in the kitchen making the pizza. Haha seems I should add 'caterer' to my roles in the video credits!
All that was missing was some footage of Rowan perfoming the song. We were driving around, looking for a cool location, and had almost given up, when we spontaneously decided to drive to a quiet parking lot. The setting looked amazing, with the sun going down in the background, and we quickly got some scenes before the camera ran out of storage space.
Among all the activities and filming, I managed to get these behind-the-scenes photos - not easy without an assistant, but multi-tasking is the name of the game.
Rowan then edited the footage together (I'm still learning the ropes with video editing), and I love how the video turned out. I think the decision to focus on real life was the right choice for the song, and so far, we've been getting lots of messages from people who were touched, and even brought to tears by the video.
Check it out now on Facebook or YouTube, and let us know what you think. We have many more videos coming your way, so be sure to subscribe to Rowan's channel or follow him on Facebook.
And as always, if you'd like to book a photo (or video) shoot, send me a mail to carrynclicks@gmail.com
Enjoy!