Making of The Music Video

Well, it’s a good thing I love challenges. Otherwise, I think I’d go completely nuts over making this music video (for the song For a Moment). You know, you get a bit nervous when the day before the big day nothing is as it should be. I think that if I tell you that the location where we were supposed to shoot the video initially was cancelled on Tuesday, and we were supposed to shoot the video on Thursday, that’s enough said. You can forget about all the ideas you might have had that were based on having that location… But just so you could get the idea of how exciting it actually is, imagine yourself, the day before recording your music video, calling all the music stores in your country, asking like some kind of a lunatic, if they could maybe… accidentally… borrow you and offer transportation for a grand piano? Tomorrow? In the morning? Would that work for you?

So, apparently, it doesn’t really work for most music stores in Croatia. I think they wouldn’t even mind it to be in the morning, but like… sometime five years, and about 12 000 kunas from now.

So, what I did in the end was… I looked up our new location, googled music schools and cultural societies in the area. Music schools in the area- none. Cultural societies- 1. So, yay! More psycho Sonja talks over the phone.

-Hello? I’m sorry to disturb you. I can see you’re the president of this local cultural society (btw, of all the excitement, I managed to wrongly pronounce the name of the society, which is a huge plus when you’re asking a stranger for a favor over the phone). Uhm, I have this, possibly a bit unusual, question, do you have a grand piano?

(After pronouncing the name of the society correctly)-Yes, we do have a piano, but it’s very old.

-Okay, wonderful. Could you borrow me that piano tomorrow? I’m recording a music video in the studio close to your building.

-You can have it, if you find a way to transport it. But I warn you, it’s reaaaally really old. You can’t really play it…

-Wow, thank you, thank you, thank you! That’s okay, I don’t need the sound, it should just look pretty.

-Yeah, but it’s reaaaaally old…

-Doesn’t matter. It reaaaally doesn’t matter.

Especially after unsuccessfully trying to get ANY (grand) piano in the world. Croatian world, so it’s a very small world, but still a world.

So, you can assume that I spend the rest of the day looking for a van so we could transport the piano.

I’m not going to write about all the chaos during the first hours of the recording, which turned into trying to get the piano from the building to the van, going to another city so I could buy make- up, which I forgot at home… Btw- you should reaaaally experience looking for powder foundation in a mini market in a small place, like the one I recorded my music video in…

So, this is me looking for a powder in a mini market.

-Do you sell powder?!?!?!?!

-Like… baby powder?

And this is me again.

Then the lady started laughing at me, after the desperate look I gave her. It’s really funny. I mean, I would laugh at anyone who’s desperately looking for any kind of make-up, because I don’t use it. Ever. Except for my concerts and, occasionally, when recording a music video. So I can’t really blame her. Dang.

But the most important thing is that I really enjoyed the recording itself in the end. The guys who filmed the video were total professionals and it was great working with them, very enjoyable and very inspiring. In a way, after a long time of something that seems to be a constant struggle with people in the music industry, it reminded me why I started to sing, why I do it and why I would like to do it… pretty much forever. It was a really great experience. I was lucky to be surrounded with the people I mentioned, I was lucky that a man who didn’t know me (and whose society’s name I pronounced wrongly) agreed to borrow me a piano, and, well, in the end, I did get the non- baby powder, so it must have been great.

And how great it was exactly? I have no idea, but I guess we’ll see in a few days. I think most people would now write- stay tuned, but that’s not anything like me, so… just stay weird.

With weirdness,

Sonja