Commission placement - Content research

Getting my commission:

For this project, I initially began thinking about it back in September when our uni briefs came through. But I got a message from Sebastien Hal, who I now work for, that reminded me that he was still interested in having me create a music video for him. I was asked by Sebastien back in June 2019 by the leader and audio editor of the online animation studio, asking if I would be interested in creating a music video for him for a song he had already created.


This song is called Nemophilist. This song follows the story of a young girl who has dreams of escaping from her reality as it is a nightmare, where she finds a forest, which becomes her escape. As said above, he reached out to me as he knew I was proud of advocating for mental health and wanting to change the conversation around it.


I knew straight away that it was something I wanted to do as mental health is an extremely close and personal topic to me. I replied back that I was happy to do it, then, he sent me over a rough demo of the song and some initial ideas he wanted for the video.

Ideas for the video:

For this commission, I wanted to make sure that Seb was involved and every step and was happy with everything leading up to the shooting of the music video. He already had some initial ideas about what he wanted the music video to have in it, which he brought to me in late October so I could start brainstorming more fleshed out ideas for the video:


And as soon as I saw the idea being about forests, ideas immediately began to come to me as well as a few locations as I had some forests near me.

A few days later, I emailed Seb a completed music video 'script', which set out timings for the lyrics and shot lengths so everything would flow smoothly to create the video. 

Extra Research:

As I had never shot a music video before

Locations and cast:

For locations, I knew I wanted to film at Bradbourne House, a privately owned (by The East Malling Trust) park-land house only a few minute's walk from my house. I got into contact with my god-mother, who works at the Research Station there and she was able to get the location for us for free, which was a big help in making this project as the forest was an essential part of the video.

I first wanted to shoot at both locations on the 6th of December, it then moved to the 16th, 28th and then the 2nd of January due to multiple changes with crew and location

For my other location, I used my grandfather's house, which I got permission for over text and also meeting in person.

For the cast, I tried for weeks to ask fellow classmates if they were free to act, James was, but sadly due to a change with our actress, I had to move the date of shooting, meaning James wouldn't be available. So, in mid-December, I put up a casting call on Mandy.com and within a few days, I got 2 applications.

I messaged both actresses, the only one ever replied back and she was our actress for the shoot. This was Jasmine and she was extremely patient when it came to the constant-changing dates. Not only was she very response to messages she also had previous experience in acting in music videos, one for another student project and another for a band that sadly was never released.


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