BTS Pictures - Master The Hurricane (Patreon)

Hello me Hearties!

After the making of video, here are some behind the scenes pictures from the "Master the Hurricane" video shoot! :)

I take this opportunity to share with you how these 2 shooting days went in more details!

We arrived in Serbia on the night before the first shooting day.

DAY 1 - Performance scenes and first acting scenes

We arrive on location and meet with the stylist, his dog and make up & hair artist team who will take care of our looks for the week-end. These people are very nice! Language is a problem sometimes but we manage to understand each other! We work on the first look for everyone: the band performance look, our pirates outfits from the official photoshoot.

We will be performing our parts in front of a green screen pretending to play on top of a cliff or massive rocks. We all shoot our part separately and we know later on that they will put us all together in the same CGI scenery. The director tells us to move dramatically to create movement and more visual emphasis. It's not easy for all of us to imagine the dramatic environment when on set everything is bright and green but I guess we all manage to get into the mood!

I'm the one who requires the most time to get ready so while they work on my hair and make up, the director shoots the guys for their performance scenes. After Meek is done he gets ready for his guardian angel shots! 👼🏻

In order to be time efficient, scenes are not shot in the order of the story but by means of production: all the scenes that needed the same light, same decor, are shot together.

We're the 19th of February and the studio isn't too heated so we're happy during the breaks to go upstairs in the heated changing rooms.

Once these scenes are done, we move on to the next part: my acting scenes for the first part of the video: island, bedroom and house scenes. It's so crazy to act with a pure green screen like this, it is the real first time for me! I understand why some actors totally dislike it and why some loved the screen technology used recently to shoot "The Mandalorian" series for instance! They shot in a studio where the action is surrounded by a massive screen the decor is projected onto. So the camera shoots the actors already in the decor and the actors can more easily feel the ambience of the scenes and might know better where to place their look. 

💄 I wanted the version of myself as a pirate in my dream to look softer and more at peace than in the rest of the story. We make my make up less intense by adding fairer colors on my existing eyes shadows and we remove the lipstick.

As the time is short, we only make a couple of takes per scene. It is very challenging as I know I can't mess it up by not being on point or by not using right away a tip that the director gives me. Sometimes I'm a bit frustrated cause I know that I could do even better if I could just do the scene one more time or so.... But I have to let it go and rely on the director's vision. If he says it's good enough, then it must be. It's a real trust game and we don't really know each other. But I quickly sense that we are in good hands, he's picky about some details and is very precise in the way he's guiding me. I really appreciate this. I'm not exactly a perfectionist otherwise it would be really hard for me to finish anything, but I have high standards and I know what I want. Some people sometimes confuse both things. Perfectionists can rarely reach their goals or make their visions real unfortunately...

After these scenes, I change outfit and hairstyle and we shoot the tavern scenes with the actors in the back! This is a lot of fun as we have to improvise fake dialogues between us to just give the idea of what's going on. It's a challenge to tell a story without a single word!

We finish the day quite late, swallowing some nice local food specialities the team ordered! 🥘

DAY 2 - The ship wrecking

We know it from the start, Day 2 is meant to be the most challenging and also probably the most fun day out of the 2! 

We arrive in the morning to witness the fantastic set the props team has built! A mast, barriers, real ropes and barrels are composing a part of our ship! I could have never thought so but the real ropes are the items that costed the most to get! It's actually rare to find!

We can totally imagine ourselves on board the ship. What's good about us is that we remained big children inside so the imagination goes wild and it's really easier to picture the scenes we are about to shoot!

In order to make some aspects realistic, the director team is blowing cold air at us through strong fans and some giant screens on the side of the ship are casting irregular white flashes to mimic the lightning. We can almost feel the storm (and totally feel the cold 🥶)

To realize the scenes where we are falling on the ship deck all together as this one is carried by the waves and hurting big rocks, the director is yelling "left!" or "right!" and we must let ourselves fall on the ground. We did that several times for some minutes each and it was quite an intense work out!! I bumped my head on a barrel...not a shooting or tour where I don't bump my head somewhere right? 😅

There again we imagined an interaction between me the captain and the other pirates. Dushi got so much into the mood, we had so much fun!^^

Once these scenes wrapped we move on to creating these images where the waves is crashing on us... meaning the team throwing buckets of (warm!) water at us. This was fun as well haha!

We go on by shooting the scenes where Dushi falls down after an explosion, where Herb falls down too and where I lay on the ground screaming in the flames. This was the most intense part for me, having the camera right in my face, being asked to scream loud out as if I truly was about to die.... I'm glad I managed to get out of my comfort zone to make this happen. It was uncomfortable and liberating at the same time. In these moments, when time can't allow hesitation, you know you just need to do it and make the best out of it, and get out of yourself. I totally understand the blocks one can experience at this exact point, I could have fallen for them too, but when overcome, there's a unique satisfaction about having proven to ourselves what we are truly capable of! 💪

We finish the day shooting the scenes where Meek appears on board my ship after the storm and shows me I'm so close to what I was looking for!

And it's a wrap!

Thank you for reading and now I'll move on to sharing content around "Legion of the Seas" which also reached 1M views! 🤩

Clémentine