since I got my new toy Canon 550 D, I like to play with it by making my quick DIY videos. This on is for Golovyshka song.
Experience an evening of experimental audio fusion, featuring world music and dance at the hub of international culture, organised by MuHa and hosted by Nottingham’s New Art Exchange.
Read more about featured artists, the venue and rest of the details here
Just received Dmitry’s master of TARAS- the song that gave the name to the MuHa’s debut album which is due to release on 4th of July 2010- to coincide with US Independence Day. The song is very powerful- Ukrainian soul is riding the step!
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.
Mike: I missed you at the Riverside Festival but got to see you at City
Roots in Peterborough and was knocked out by what you did on your own
for an audience of maybe ten people. You’re amazing.
Seen you twice now at the Voodoo Lounge and the whole band is superb.
Want a record for myself but want to get one for my brother and sister
who live a long way from here. I know they’d love you too.
All the best and thank you for another great evening.
Thank you Mike, we are very happy you like what we do and hope to see you again soon!
… Continued from Part 1
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
….Continued ( from the Background) :
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We had a song, we had a story behind it and we wanted to make a video for it. We knew approximately what we want to see in the video, but we had no idea of how to make it happen. Neither of us in MuHa didn’t have much experience in making videos, so we needed a director.
After a few brief couple of meetings between ourselves we arranged a day for MuHa to travel to the Peak District to make a shooting of the band playing the instruments first and we left the storyline part of the project for the next week. At that point we still did not have either a director or a camera man and hoped to rely on own resources- after all, we are talented people!
Luckily for us, just a day before the shooting Sunday, Louise has managed to get her friend – a film director Gaylan Nazhad – to help us out just for this part – and I am very happy she did. As a professional director, Gaylan just made it happen. He was giving us clear instructions where to be, where to look and what to do.
When you watch a film, the actor may seem all glamorous and important, but in fact, during the shooting process, an actor is just a ‘servant’ to the director- an actor does what he has been told to do; and it is a director who is the master.
Good fun it was. The sun was shining, we were playing the music and singing and dancing on top of the mountain with a fabulous view on the valley of Peak District; passers-by and Rambler’s walkers were taking pictures of us and we were reflecting the freshness and brightness of the day. The video project is on the roll!
The further blogs about the storyline shooting with a dedicated director and a group of Indian Dancers will follow. The actual scene of Rusalkas ‘seduce-and-kill-the-guy’ and the post video production blogs will appear here, on the MuHa web blog later! Watch this space.
Read the Background of the music video here
…continue to part 2
MuHa is a well- known Nottingham based band that brings music from Eastern Europe to the heart of the versatile world music scene in the East Midlands.
It formed in 2004, when Iryna Muha, a Ukrainian born singer and songwriter, moved to the East Midlands from New York and met Dmitry Fedotov, a Latvian rock legend. Today MuHa has grown to include musicians from Armenia, Ireland, Scotland and Nottingham to experiment with a mix of world music sounds the East Midlands has to offer.
You would hear African berimbau, Indian rhythm Kathak, Irish fiddle, and Cuban groove.
MuHa brings New Roots from Eastern Europe music to your doorstep in Broadway as a part of Nottingham Hockley Hustle annual music and creative arts festival this Sunday, October 25th.
Don’t miss it!
As a part of MuHa new album which is due to be released in the spring 2010, we took up a challenge to make a video for our song Richenka (from Ukranian: River) with no funding, but with lots of enthusiasm and combined creative energy of the people involved. The choice of the song was obvious – it is a quintessential mix of what we are trying to do as an Eastern European band in the UK.
Richenka was written in a traditional Ukrainian folk music style and has a theme typical to folklore of many cultures. It is performed with African instrument Beriumbau, which is used in Brasilian Capoeira martial arts. The rhythm of Richenka is also enhanced by Indian rhythm Kathak.
More posts about the process and the progress of our video (ad)venture; about the people who got involved, will follow later (watch this space!), for now is the story:
-
A girl looses a guy she dearly loves because the River of Life offers
him pleasures he can not resist. The guy gets enchanted by the lively
and beautiful, but evil spirits that play deadly game with his mind and the guy
forgets about his real life and Love. The girl doesn’t see any other
way then to drown herself in a river and become one of the rusalkas.
read the translation of the lyrics of Richenka here.
Continue to read Music Video Diary Part 1. The Peak District.