"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

Heard it All Before- Emiliana Torrini - CLIP

This is for you Emiliana. Thank you for the music. Have fun in Iceland. When you get back you can have a proper DVD. xx Ali

Video:
Director - Ali Taylor
Editor and 1st AD - Julia Knight
Producer and Head of Weird Girls: Kitty Von Sometime
Cameraman - Kristjan Zaklynsky
Actress taking off makeup- Sophie Woolley
Makeup - Helga Sjöfn Kjartansdóttir
Lighting - Asgrimur Gudbjartsson
Head Runner - Fríða Einarsdóttir
Catering - Sigríður Elva Vilhjálmsdóttir


The track "Heard it All Before' comes from Emiliana Torrini's new album "Me and Armini" and was written by Emiliana and Dan Carey. The film was made in Iceland using ordinary girls from Kitty Von- Sometime's Weird Girls Project as the mermaids. None of them knew what they would be doing on the day. Actress Sophie Woolley features on the left, shot in the UK. It's been a lot of fun for me as I've worked with Emiliana's music before on the Sunnyroad video. This time it was a totally different process, more of an art film and involving a lot more people.
(Anyone who hasn't seen Sunnyroad can view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyuL1z2tejs )


If you'd like to see the Weird Girls web page and another version of the movie, AND their amazing photos, follow this link to Kitty Von-Sometime's brilliant page : http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Weird-Girls-Project/25236661638?ref=ts

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!

WATCH THIS SPACE PEREZ HILTON

Apparently Perez Hilton is a big fan of Emiliana Torrini, having recently sited her video for "Big Jumps" as a favorite and described her as the "perfect successor to Feist". I recently emailed him just to let him know that we are currently editing "The Weird Girls Project" film using "Heard it All Before". He must be looking forward to seeing it as he replied that the whole thing was "Fab!"

Oooohhh...Watch this space Perez. 

EMILIANA IS EXCITED ABOUT NEW FILM

When Emiliana saw photos from on set at the Weird Girls Episode 6 shoot she was very positive. In fact her reaction was; "Wooooooobeeedooobeee!" which sounds like excitement to me. She's the first person, apart from the crew and the 16 Weird Girls who performed, to have seen anything from the top secret shoot. (That's right even Perez hasn't sen a thing yet. No preferential treatment here people.) 

We are currently editing the rushes into a film using her track "Heard it All before" from "Me and Armini" as the soundtrack.

Follow the progress of the production on this blog from Sept 24th 2008, when it all started, until the film comes out. The very first online link will be here. 

Here's a teaser pic...to tease you with....

EMILIANA + THE WEIRD GIRLS + DAN CAREY= HAPPY THINGS

I 'm counting my lucky stars. The closer it gets to editing time for Episode 6 of The Weird Girls Project the more excited I get and the happier I am that we are using Emiliana's music. I don't think I'd fully comprehended how much she's loved in Iceland until I went there. It's great when people like your friends, but when it's an entire country that likes them, that's amazing...and...a little weird. But in a good way.

I don't know if it was the excitement of the day, the incredibly good weather or a love of Emiliana that made two dozen people arrive so cheerful (and on time) on the freezing cold morning of the shoot. Whatever it was it was great and the Weird Girls turned out in full force. (Incidentally none of them are that weird, and that's not the point at all. The way I see it, the point is providing a bit of joy and fun for girls who might otherwise feel like weirdos for having hobbies like running around in spandex. For an explanation of "why" they do it see my first blog on the subject at the very bottom.)



As I've already said in an earlier blog the shoot day was a great success. We managed to shoot everything I'd hoped for, fighting hard against the clock. Incredibly we shot 4 x 64min tapes in 4 hours. Impossible? Well..we had the good fortune of acquiring a second camera courtesy of the kind documentary crew who were covering the day. It's a luxury a music video director shouldn't get used to! We had a lot of fun though and kept blaring out "Heard it All Before" on the loudspeakers. I'm sure all of Iceland could hear it.

Here's a mystery shot to whet your appetites. It was taken by Freida, who did a very good impression of a peeping tom and caused a stir.




After the shoot it was food and hot tubs for 16 hungry Weird Girls and a handful of crew. The best lamb I have ever tasted was provided by Kitty-Von Sometime.



The only pity is I know Emiliana would have enjoyed it too and she wasn't around due to music commitments. Throughout the process I've been keeping her informed about what I'm doing. She's been so brilliant about it, giving me total creative free reign, never questioning a thing. I think we built up that trust by making the "Sunnyroad" video. Dan Carey (AKA Mr Dan) who I've written about on here already, has been amazing too. Dan co-wrote the album with Emiliana and he's given me just as much trust and freedom as she has.

I'm really looking forward to editing this and seeing what fans of Emiliana think of it.