SIREN SANG BUT I COULDN'T HEAR

Siren is the title of the song in the Bungle Music Video Contest. I had developed a strong concept for the video; I heard it a song of female enpowerment, of a woman "letting go" of all the baggage from a bad relationship, a woman who had given her all and gotten nothing in return. They lyrics and Ayah's powerful vocals could not let me interpret it any other way.

So I thought of taking an illustrative, rather than an interpretive approach to the song, basically telling the story through images. So following the woman on her journey of not only leaving her man, but leaving behind all those things that were holding her back. So I would need an actress and several locations to track her journey. OK, so that was doable, I cold contact Moniquea, the actress I used for After and get things going; but I had only a week for shooting.

But as I thought more and more about it a new concept came to mind. I wanted to make the song more universal. Not just about one woman but about all women. So what if I storyboarded the shots for that one actress ... and had several actresses play them out. So if Girl One got out of bed, looked at the empty spot where he should be and then exit the room, other girls would do the exact same shot. The women would be going on a journey, "letting go" as the song saids and at the end, they would all meet up.

Yes, I liked this concept very much. I even began to block out the shots. But of course this created a new set of issues: Now I needed to find more actresses, and to do it properly, have them all together on one day so I could correctly match the shots. I would have to coordinate these actresses to get together on one or two days.

And I had less than two weeks to get the whole thing done, production and post production. I have to leave a good solid 10 hours or so at the end to upload the HD video. The logistics began to eat me up. I was already conceding defeat.

Then Hayley passed. And I just find myself now, about a week away from the deadline, out of time and perhaps too emotionally beat up to properly attack this project. It's too bad, I liked the song and I liked my concept but I don't think I can make this deadline.

I still intend to contribute to the 60 Second Film Festival. I have a few concepts for that so stay tuned.