Shot a music video last month with Toronto based film production company Merging Forest. I became aware of the company after catching the breathtaking video they did for Toronto’s David Celia and Marla of the song, The Love Of Life. It’s a combination of really luscious music production quality by David, and stunning still life style shots that animate the characters to capture the essence of the song that had me hooked and curious to collaborate with the two man crew. I sent some samples to David and Michael from my new EP and the track "Sexy Driver" struck a chord of inspiration for both of them so we rolled with it.
Merging Forest keeps me in the dark for mostly everything, and it's not how I am used to working. I just want to be prepared, but people have told me that I'm a control freak so I finally realize that sitting back and allowing things to happen might be the way to go. The 6 person 12 hour shoot was done in a car garage on St. Clair Avenue, my personal mechanic Rudy operates his business out of. It was a long tiring day, but the crew stuck it out like champions.
The devil is the antagonist and he delivered. We casted Toronto based actor Mike Smith, pale and boney, who happily admits to having a lot of experience playing creeps. On the breaks in between shots he asked way too many questions and I have to refocus his attention away from talking about Taylor Swift and how tough the music industry is to THE TASK AT HAND, bro we are doing indie shit remember. The power that happens when people come together, I took one look at him in the rearview and my heart kind of pounded. But that was the only shot of us together, everything else was filmed separately so it was a little more challenging without a real threat in the back, but exciting because again you just have to trust the process.
Makeup artist Rosy Grym trekked down from outside of Toronto to the location for the day. The look was kind of Mad Max, Men In Black meets Blade Runner inspired. I'm wearing a gnarly coyote fur jacket on top of a plastic corset by Brooklyn based designer Annabel Ruddle. I just let Rosy have at it with her vision, teasing my hair and painting red and gold wet tears. Perfect, and somehow puts me into the superhero feeling that I need to beat the devil. It was hot, and I kept sweating in the fur. The jacket ripped down the middle at the back half way through the shoot from taking it on and off so many times. Honestly I was pretty nervous to star in it, but who else was it going to be? By the last scene Michael shouts “Mimi you're acting”, hurray.
I keep wavering on the title of the song, but my friend and avid music lover Chung Wong catches me and says “I noticed you changed the title of your song, why did you do that? You can’t call it Driver? Makes no sense, it's overused”, he’s right, and he picks up every little detail goddam it! Can’t get anything past this guy. It was Sexy Driver but I started to just refer to it as Driver. I was worried about how it would come across, and what it meant in the context of the song and next to the lyrics, and it's like-do people even listen to lyrics anymore? So it started to affect my vision, and what I would be wearing, and it just got kind of hairy. Nobody would know, but the title really comes from an inside joke between myself and a close friend who was making fun of me pushing the boundaries of work attire when I was employed as a delivery driver. There was no official dress code, and nobody wanted the job, so I got away with wearing little flower rompers and a high ponytail with big bug eye glasses, tramping around carrying semi heavy stuff. My friend Joelle, would address me as “Sexy Driver” as long as I had that position, but you know she has that cute french accent so it sounds different coming from her. Whatever, keep the authenticity of it- Sexy Driver, or as she would pronounce it “secksee dwiye-vare”.
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