Directed by Arran Christie Dawson.
Co-directed by Rachelle Rhienne.
Filmed and edited by Arran Christie Dawson.
Choreography by Rachelle Rhienne, George Fowler and Morgane Cabella.
Hair, makeup and styling by Rachelle Rhienne and Morgane Cabella.
We filmed my single M2M's music video at Lomond Park Hotel in Balloch, Loch Lomond in February 2019.
I have been majorly involved in the production of all my videos, but M2M was definitely the most challenging and hands-on I've been in the process of styling, writing and creating the final product. There was a lot of months of planning and organising leading up to the film date and I can definitely say, there were a lot of tears haha!
I love to have a lot of personal touches in my videos, so I decided I wanted to film locally to me and to involve a lot of local friends and family as extras. We had George Fowler (actor/dancer/singer) travel up from London to play the role of my love interest. We filmed over a two day period, splitting up the day/park scenes on the first day and the night/dance scenes on the second.
Arran Christie Dawson (videographer) filmed us in Balloch Park for the first day. We spent half the day in the park acting and messing about, creating the story of the relationship and half the day in a luxurious flat that Arran had set up with moody lights to create a romantic atmosphere. We were incredibly lucky with the weather that day and Balloch Park is stunning in the sun.
That night, George and I worked on choreography, coming up with a salsa routine we were going to be performing for the club scenes the next day. Prior to filming, I had attended a few classes at Academia De Salsa in Glasgow to learn some salsa moves. George already knew some steps, so between us, we had our dance choreographed and memorised pretty fast.
I remember getting absolutely no sleep that night, which is usual for me as my brain can never stop. I had dance moves going round in my head, hoping all of my extras would show up and worrying about shooting a 13 hour music video running on no sleep!
I had met Morgane Cabella (French dancer/model) on set of a photoshoot early on in the year and we arranged for her to fly over from France to be my main dancer in the video. Safe to say, she smashed it!
We had trombone and trumpet players Callum Wilson and Lewis Robb travel up from Glasgow to be part of the band alongside guitarist Johnny Barr, pianist Robbie Noble, and Richard Graham on the cajon. The band really added to the latin dance style of the track and helped to create the good vibes.
Arran created such a good atmosphere when we got round to filming scenes with the band and the extras dancing. it was a lot of fun and was so good to see everyone enjoying it! It definitely helped that they all said they liked the track. We filmed mine and George’s meeting and dancing scenes first and then Arran shot of a lot of different angles of the band playing and the extras dancing with each other.
Photographers Mark Harris and Gordon McGowan came along to take pictures for behind the scenes footage. I also had my video camera, so I went around filming some behind the scenes video footage that I later edited for my Youtube channel.
We wrapped up around 8PM that night once we had all the footage we needed. I loved every minute of the filming but I needed to catch up on so much sleep haha! I ate a lot of pizza that night and went straight to bed, looking forward to seeing the finished product!
