This is the behind-the-scenes story of the music video for Queen Emily – a song by Rowan Stuart, which I recently helped film.
Queen Emily was inspired by a book called The Lie Tree from one of Rowan and my favourite fantasy authors; Frances Hardinge. Frances' books often centre around young girls who are misunderstood, underestimated and undervalued, and yet who end up changing the world they live in.
I've loved this song of Rowan's since I first heard the demo last year, and have been nagging him to make a music video for it for a while. With the South African hard lockdown in place, it really put the brakes on our plans to continue making music videos for Rowan's latest album 'A Map Of Forever'. But recently, things have eased up, and the timing felt right.
Rowan was worried that the video concept was overly-ambitious, as his plan was to weave a story around the themes of each of Frances Hardinge's nine novels! I believed we could do it, and I immediately had the performers in mind; my 9-year-old cousin Blair, and her mom Janine, who live on a beautiful farm in Botha's Hill near Durban.
We spent weeks searching for strange props – vintage dolls, potion bottles, a semi-realistic-looking plush bear... We ended up with a kind of creepy shrine, filled with peculiar props waiting to be filmed.
Rowan directed and filmed most of Blair's scenes, and I wore many hats as behind-the-scenes photographer, Bear puppeteer, creepy branch operator and more – there was never a dull moment.
Blair was full of energy, and she especially enjoyed any scene that involved running.
After three days of filming, working around the rainy and unpredictable Spring weather, we had finished all of Blair's scenes, including the bedtime story scene with Janine. I think they did a really good job, and Blair looked like a real little fairy-tale heroine.
Next up were Rowan's performance scenes. These can be simple to film, but choosing the right location/backdrop is key. There's a great textured concrete wall on my family farm in Camperdown, and we ended up filming against it, as a way to add visual contrast to Blair's predominantly lush green locations.
Just off-camera was a large industrial refrigerator, which was making so much noise. Rowan could barely hear the song, which was played back from a mobile phone, over the roar of the fridge.
With Rowan's scenes wrapped up, there were a few tiny odds and ends to film (we forgot to film a close-up of Janine's hands holding up the Queen Emily book – so those are actually my hands hahaha), and then the music video was complete.
We hope you like the final video, and we look forward to bringing you the next one!