The  female figure in this painting  is based on Brian’s  Ukrainian wife Svitlana and the painting itself was ‘…inspired by the musical feel of [MuHa song]  Kaby Vedala’.

This is  the best compliment we could have received for our music and we would like to thank Brian for  sharing his beautiful vision of Kaby Vedala  with us.

Brian Barclay's vision of Kaby Vedala

I was humbled and overjoyed with the storyboard we just received, it looks epic. It’s distinctive Asian style adds yet another dimension to the meaning of our music.

Thanks to Louise Clements- the bass player in MuHa, a great  woman  who have friends from all over the world- we have this amazing opportunity to create a Chinese animation on Ukrainian famous epic theme Taras Bulba,  which is expected to be released early in 2012. Best xmas ever!

Olena Pavlova
Viet-Hai Phung
Yuriy Ushakov
Lourdes Benegas Cabezos
Frederique Poujades
Wendy Johnston
Helena Suarez
Rocchino Franchelli
Peter Zabulis
Paulina Bark
CHILLED PRODUCE

The Thank you cards are coming out to the supporters next week and the DVDs will be following a bit later as we decided to add extra feature – the interview and the making of the video.

Indeed, we managed to raise only about 5% of required budget and will have to cut down on some things, but we are very happy with the support we had , even if it did not materialise in monetary value.

Once again, thank you for every single person supported us, including The Nottingham Evening Post and Grantham Journal for covering the story.

Jason and Brett already have good experience creating music videos for various bands, but still buzzing with ideas and have hunger for success in this highly competivive area. As a team they combine the skills of strong creative vision, excellent digital proficiency and attention to details.
Watch this space for further updates!

Taras Bulba is a Cossack, a Ukrainian folk icon which was created by a genius Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol. His story is about strength, brotherhood, family, pride, the love to the motherland-to name just a few.

And the cover for MuHa’s album TARAS is being designed by my Ukrainian friend who does something like this :

The second part of our music video shooting was aimed to capture the story line. MuHa now had a dedicated director- Darius Powell on board, he prepared a scene list based on the story and had his own vision of how the video will develop- this will include further shooting at the river and in the gallery with a projection on a screen.

… But this will follow later- for now we needed a guy and rusalkas roles to be filled.

For the guy part we decided not to go into a great deal looking for an actor as we thought our percussionist Richard Kensington can fit perfectly well. He was not very keen on it at the beginning, but later on, he seemed to enjoy his part- after all his role was to play a guy mesmerised by seductively dancing around him rusalkas (why he didn’t want the part on a first place??)

For rusalkas part we asked beautiful girls from Manushi dance company to be featured in our video. Manushi (means humanity) is a company of Indian Classical dance form of Kathak which is lead by Vina Ladwa. Our Louise Clements has been dancing with this group for a long time- this is where hypnotising Takita-Digita rythm in Richenka comes from! The girls were wearing traditional Indian dresses to make cultural mix in the song visual as well.

Everybody had happy roles but me- I had to be that sad girl who is about to kill herself, which spoilt my mood for the whole week– perhaps I tried to get into my role too hard – how do actors separate reality from their roles?!

This shooting highlighted our lack of experience and how much all the details matter. We completely messed up with the make up of a crying girl- it just didn’t look right (in fact, it was horrific)! One of the dancers had a wedding ring on, but rusalkas just can not have a wedding ring! Things like that only come to the attention when you watch the footage on a big screen, but it’s too late to do anything about it, we will have to improvise later with what we have.

Next time I will be telling about the drowning scene- how I had to swim in the river Trent in October. Brrr. Why am I getting the worst parts??

While the video is still in progress, watch the Flash animation I’ve done for the song as part of my design degree.

…to be continued

This image was not created in 3D program- it was created in Photoshop using paths and masking layers. It took me about 10 hours to make it using a photograph as a base image.

She put in simple few words those thoughts and feelings that I was researching in my design degree and writing songs about for the last six years, but never managed to outline so precise as she did.

Binta was talking about assimilation and integration.
Assimilation is when you come from one culture to another and become a part of the new the community, acquiring it’s properties, but loose what you had.
Integration is when you bring your culture into a new environment and share it, put it in a pot and stay open minded – then we surround ourselves by the rich culture.

I will let this to be my answer to a question why I do not sing in English