"Heard It All Before" Wins Best Music Video at Northern Wave Iceland

"Heard It All Before", a film I directed for The Weird Girls Project, with Emiliana Torrini's music, just won Best Music Video at Northern Wave International Film Festival Iceland, beating Gus Gus's "Add This Song" and Roots Manuver's "C.R.U.F.F" This is my second award in Iceland, where my mum jokes that I am internationally famous.

The film is based around Emiliana Torrini's track "Heard it All Before" from her album "Me and Armini" and features The Weird Girls as gorgeous glittering mermaids. It was shot on a shoestring outside Reykjavik and makes up Episode 6 of the wonderful Weird Girls series masterminded by Kitty Von Sometime. Although the film takes a music video style format, it had none of the budget or industry backing of a music video, but was created totally independently, with Emiliana and Rough Trade's permission, but without their intervention. It was purely a labour of love. It was edited by the fantastic Julia Knight, using the facilities at Trim Editing. Back in October 2008, I documented the Weird Girls shoot on this blog.

My first Icelandic award in 2006 was for "Sunnyroad", also for Emiliana, which won The Icelandic Music Awards beating Sigur Ros.

This is the Weird Girls Site, run by Kitty:

http://www.theweirdgirlsproject.com/

Sunnyroad- Winner of Icelandic Music Awards, Best Video 2006

CRUELTY TO MERMAIDS

I've had a lot of positive feedback about my involvement in the Weird Girls Project. I'm editing the video right now with Julia Knight at Trim. However I must admit there's been a surprising number of "concerned" emails about the health and well being of the girls. Specifically people in the UK and USA have been worried about my immense cruelty at putting 16 girls in a pool when Iceland's autumn temperatures were dipping to -2 °C. I can see why people might worry ; There I am wrapped up like a Siberian explorer, yelling into a megaphone while the girls, clad in spandex, are making flower formations in the apparently freezing cold pool.

However if appearances can be deceiving double that on film shoots and multiply it by the square root of 100 in Iceland. Icelandic people, by the way, have made no such appeals for the prevention of cruelty to mermaids. As they all know geothermal heat has been used by people since time began. And Iceland happens to be a hot-bed (sorry) of geothermal activity, being situated on the mid-ocean ridge of the Atlantic Ocean where tectonic plates meet and magma reaches the sea floor. The water at Sundlaugin Laugaskarð pool is naturally between around 35 and 40 °C. The girls were mainly complaining of being to hot!



WEIRD GIRLS SHOOT BEHIND THE SCENES
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kittyvonsometime/sets/72157608316502781/

GEOTHERMAL HEAT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heating
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_Iceland

Sundlaugin Laugaskarð pool
http://www.infoiceland.is/infoiceland/vorur/Default.asp?ew_0_cat_id=3241&ew_0_p_id=5925127

THE BLUE LAGOON- THE ULTIMATE GEOTHERMAL EQPERIENCE
http://www.bluelagoon.com/

SOME WEIRD GIRLS PICTURES FROM SHOOT with EMILIANA TORRINI SONG

I'm over the moon about how The Weird Girls Project photos have turned out. This photo shoot was done alongside the filming of the video, which uses "Heard it All Before" by Emiliana Torrini as the soundtrack. There was also a documentary shot on the day. You can see how the project has developed from September to the present day, including Emiliana's reactions to the shoot, Perez Hilton's love of her music and info about the shoot day, by following the blog below.



This is me being a director. This is a standard look in the trade. The megaphone is a recent addition to my ensemble. It works so I'm sticking to it.




Some of my girls being fabulous.


If you'd like to see the full collection of official photos, taken by Hörður Ellert Ólafsson follow this link to producer and artist Kitty-Von -Sometime's flickr page.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kittyvonsometime/sets/72157608316585383/

The video, which I directed in Iceland earlier this month, is currently being edited at Trim in London and will be out very soon on this blog. I'll be keeping Perez Hilton informed too because he's a big fan of Emiliana. Aren't we all!

WEIRD GIRLS- OH WHAT A PERFECT DAY

Oh happy days! Iceland's weather gods decided to be very kind to us yesterday. Weeks of rain clouds parted to reveal bright sunny skies, the perfect shoot weather. Today the rain is back on in full torrential force, making us feel that we were fortunate indeed.

On top of that, the 16 lovely Weird Girls and crew who took part were all brilliant. The theme and location will be revealed when the video comes out in a few weeks time. Editor Julia Knight and I are very excited about cutting this.

Thanks everyone who took part!

Availible soon to watch at http://www.alitaylor.tv

WEIRD GIRL DIRECTOR ARRIVES IN REYKJAVIK

My journey began at the receiving end of a facebook message from producer Kitty Von Sometime asking me if I'd come to Iceland and shoot the first full video Episode of The Weird Girls Project. That was a couple of months ago and sitting in my small but perfectly comfy room in a Central Reykjavik guest house, I can't quite believe the time has come.

The trip from London was uneventful until I arrived in Reykjavik to find it snowing heavily. Fortunately I was wearing most of my clothes, double gloves etc . Myself and one native Icelander were the only ones left outside the airport as numerous families and pre-booked mini busses carted people off to their respective homes and hotels. There were no taxis. Apparently most cabs still had summer tyers on so we were unlikely to see very many. Luckily I was rescued by the nice Icelandic guy who eventually found a cab, offered to share it and then was generous enough to cover my share of the fare by way of "A welcome to Iceland gift". Very nice, thank you. I wish I'd asked his name. That would have been polite.

My luck didn't last at the guesthouse. Well it did really, but it had a lapse. Following a sign that directed me to the back of the building in the adjacent street, I came across some sort of icy death slide disguised as a path. This would have been fine, I have been snowboarding, but somehow as I fell to the ground my suitcase handle managed to wallop me in the mouth. I arrived at my guest house looking like I'd just been in a bar brawl. And as I stood there spitting blood into the snow, wearing all my clothes and a silly hat, in front of the sleepy looking middle aged man I'd just woken up, he said, "Welcome, come in" as if I was the most normal person in the world, and I knew I was in a very special place indeed.

They seem a generous and trusting lot. I just hope they don't laugh at my duck-billed bruise face tomorrow.

WEIRD GIRLS WEATHER OF DOOM

WEIRD GIRLS- GET READY FOR THE RAIN!

The upcoming Episode 6 of The Weird Girls Project, to be filmed at a secret Icelandic location next week, looks to be plagued by fearsome weather. Fortunately for us it's unlikely to be as snowy as in the episode above. This time around we are hoping for a distinctly unsnowy feel. Emiliana has agreed to let us use her new track "Heard it All Before" as a sound track for the episode.

Luckily the production team being ever so resourceful and creative have a few locations up their sleeve for me. And in the true spontaneous spirit of Weird Girls we won't really know where we are shooting until the last possible minute.

Fingers crossed that wherever we are it's not as dramatic as the image below suggests!

WEIRD GIRLS PROJECT- WITH EMILIANA TORRINI'S MUSIC

Every few months in Reykjavik  there's an invasion  of spandex clad girls or giant bunny rabbits. The Weird Girls Project is part art project, part massive giggle. Originally a photographic project conceived by Reykjavik artist and lycra celeb Kitty Von Sometime, it has developed notoriety in Iceland over the past couple of years as something of a phenomenon. The concept is simple; Get a bunch of girls together, dress up, have fun and be very, very silly indeed while the whole spectacle is photographed.  All this in the name of a laugh and confidence boosting, according to Kitty. Sounds good to me. The exciting bit; not a single one of the dozen or so girls who typically sign up knows what they are actually going to be doing. It's all a surprise. I like surprises.

It is now going cinematic and aims to create a film, directed by a professional music video director ( Me), without losing it's ethos of spontenaity, fun and surprise. To make things even more exciting, my good friend Emiliana Torrini has agreed to let us use the track "Heard it All Before" off her new Album "Me and Armini" as the soundtrack. We are all really looking forward to it. I made Emiliana's Sunnyroad video a few years ago so I'm looking forward to making a film that uses her music as a soundtrack. 

I'll be leaving for Reykjavik on Oct 2nd 2008 and will be blogging the trip as I go. All will be revealed about this years amazing costumes and ace location.

What's Icelandic for "Sounds like a right laugh" ? 

(If you have not see the Sunnyroad video, which I enjoyed making so so much, here it is. )
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MyuL1z2tejs