Q&A "Master The Hurricane" (Patreon)

Hello me hearties!

I am happy to answer your questions about the video for "Master The Hurricane"! Verena, I guess the previous post answered yours about what's real and fake right? :D

1.  Where did you film this video?

The whole video was filmed indoors, on 2 days, in a studio near Belgrade in Serbia.

2.  How did the storyline of what is happening in the video come about?

I wrote the script based on the main ideas I had in mind when writing the lyrics of the song: how to find ground and stay connected to ourselves and our own power while in the middle of a crisis? How can we stay within our inner peace, when the world outside comes to pieces? “How can I master the Hurricane?”

Transposing this idea into the pirate world came obviously to me under the forms of a storm at sea and a beautiful tropical island. The island is the inner peace we’re looking for, the ship in the middle of the storms represent ourselves and the issues we’re facing.

Then I imagined the main character and what she was going to go through…

We wanted this video to be impactful and dramatic and the idea of having us all die came out pretty early in the process.

Yet the message of the song in the end is positive with the main character saying “I’ve learnt to master the hurricane”. So I told myself that our death cannot be the ending.

I thought of creating a vision in which we would see us die and then a real ending where the character’s problem is solved and the pirates ship is saved.

I imagined then another character guiding the main one and showing her this vision. I thought this character could be a guardian angel showing her signs like they are said to do.

I love twists in movies so I made sure the guardian angel character remained mysterious until the moment where the spectator understands the whole catastrophe is a vision and didn’t happen for real.

Once this main part was figured out the rest pretty much fell into place with having the main character dreaming of a place to go to and convincing her crew to join her.

I knew it was a complex story and we had some moments on set with the director where we had to make sure we were referring to the same time line! Shooting a 7mn movie in 2 days has been a real challenge but the director knew exactly what he was doing and we understood each other perfectly in the end.

3.  I often notice that that your gestures/body language at various points always seem to fit really well with that precise moment in the song. How does that come about? Do you work them all out yourself, or does the director suggest what you might do?

Thank you very much for this compliment! I feel music with my whole body, it’s impossible for me not to move around while singing and sometimes I have issues canalizing my energy to be able to focus on singing haha! So I have to admit that I never work any of my moves. When we shot the video, it was the first time that we were performing it, we had never played it live before and had to find on set a way to interpret it. I went with the flow of the music and the feelings I wanted to convey.
Let’s keep in mind that we shot every scene several times so the director also chose what he thought looked best over what we offered. He guided us too as he needed movement and dynamic gestures to make the whole video more impactful!

4.  The conversations in the videos, e.g. the part in the tavern when you explained the plan to the guys. Are these real conversations that fit the scene? And if so were these scripted or improvised?

For the story’s sake we indeed needed some of the characters to interact and have a conversation that would have nothing to do with the lyrics of the song. So we improvised the scenes, I was saying nonsense in the tavern when we were looking at the map! And with my mysterious stalker I was asking him things like “who are you, what do you want, why are you following me and my men…”? In both moments we ended up acting for real and it was super fun haha!

5.  Was it hard for you to work with a greenscreen? I know of some actors (I think one of them was Ian McKellen) who said it is very hard to work with only green screens because you have to imagine everything around you. Did you feel the same?

Oh yes, I really had to imagine the scenery around me and to stay connected to my character. It was easier for me as I wrote the story. I already had so many images in mind! And I think I’ve practiced that a lot being a child. I spent so much time playing in my mind, imagining situations and stories. And I also wanted to become an actress at some point, so feeding my inner world to be able to act and bring emotions live was already there. But indeed, nothing replaces the real world, where you know what to look at, where the decor already conveys an atmosphere and so on!

6. I like how in your lyrics you at times establish a problem or obstacle and then by the end of the song you have conquered and overcame the problem. Asking “How can I master the hurricane” during the chorus but then in the outro declaring that “I’ve learned to master the hurricane”. I find it similar to The Violence Within where the first line is “I need to escape” then the last line of the song is “I am free of me”. When you first started writing these lyrics, is this something you knew you wanted and were going to do?

I don’t always know where I’m going when I write lyrics and when it comes to “The Violence Within” the line “I am free of me” revealed itself while composing that part, I didn’t put much thought into it even if the chorus was already there. So yeah, some things are driven by less conscious forces let’s say! Perhaps these are things I really need to let out...

But it’s true that I love songs to be like stories with a scenery, characters, a problem and solution. Like little tales. Also because I feel like I have a lot to tell and repeating the exact same chorus 3 or 4 times sounds a bit boring to me. I like to make them evolve by making the meaning of the song evolve. I did that for "The Deep & The Dark" and "Heroes of the Dawn" already, where the last chorus opens up or closes the point of the story.

Regarding "Master The Hurricane", the song was so long with so much ongoing, I had to make the characters and situation evolve haha!

Thank you guys!

More to come!

PS: you might feel spammed by me these days but I can finally put all this content together and share it with you, until the December holidays! So I take advantage of it haha!
We will be on tour again Feb / March / April 2023 and I know I will have less time to share exclusive content with you!

Hugs,
Clemi