This is the second installment of my BTS of making Night Soliloquy with Maria Zhdavonich. If you haven’t watched the video or read the first post , you can find it here.

Production

The production of Night Soliloquy was over two full days at 3 different locations. Aside from maybe two to three scenes, we used mostly natural/existing light for the music video. Similar to my shoot with Ronan, although we had worked out many of the key visuals during our workshops, we allowed time on shoot days to experiment and try out different things within our environment.

The first day of our shoot was at Eden Yarra Valley where we did all the exteriors in the bush and garden, the ‘marionette’ on the hill, and a few shots for ‘the fall’. Then on the second day we filmed all the scenes at the house, then we went to Abbotsford Convent and filmed the staircase and some more shots for ‘the fall’.

Filming in black and white allowed us to blend shots from different locations in a more seamless and dreamlike way. It also allowed us to subvert expectations of day and night (i.e. in the marionette scene where we inverted the black and white to produce a ‘negative’ look).

The very opening scene of Maria was lit with an Aputure 600d bouncing off a 4x4 silver reflector through the window. I was really keen on backlighting Maria through a window for the first shot to instil a sense of mystery, and to set the tone of a dreamy daze. The hazer was brought in for the bedroom scenes as well to bring out a glow in the room to heighten the dreamlike feeling.

For all other shots, Nanlite 60bs were used as fill lights when required. Since they were so compact, light and battery operated, it allowed us to move around and film quickly.

It was a real joy working with Maria on this project! I know she had wanted to create a music video for Night Soliloquy for a while prior to us meeting, and so she had a lot of great ideas coming into our collaboration. I appreciated her enthusiasm and willingness to experiment; and for the physicality she brought to her role on screen especially in the marionette scene (and not to mention all that traipsing around the bush in socks!!). It was a lot of fun putting this surreal little ditty together. Many thanks to ANAM, our audio engineer Nathan Ellul, Liam Pilgrim for lending his arm for the final scene, and of course the brilliant Maria!