June – The Story Behind The Video …

“June” is a song off our debut album When We’re Together. This post will tell you all about the making of the music video for it and a little bit about the song-writing process, so if you don’t know the finished song or video yet, then please scroll down to the bottom of the page and watch it first.

June first took shape in our rehearsal room/studio, probably back in 2010. Sitting on the floor, facing each other, guitars in each of our laps, determined not to leave the studio without at least a rough draft of a song. It was around the time when we figured out that we came up with a lot more intricate and interesting chord progressions when we based them around melodies we came up with independently first. Loads of humming and restraining each other from drawing on the all too common chord patterns.

We worked on it until we got stuck. “Papaaaa!” … You see, some people call their Dad if their car gets stuck somewhere, we call ours if the song gets stuck somewhere (well, we call him for the car problems too) 🙂 Together we worked out all the parts, where to take it, what to express, how to arrange and structure the song. June was born!

Once our Debut Album got released in 2012 it was time to start thinking of video ideas but it wasn’t until May of 2014 that we finally finished it. That’s because during the filming process a lot of things happened, not least moving countries!

So we started filming the main part of the video in Austria and ended up adding the final touches in the UK!

Mona as the personification of “June”

We liked the idea of giving the concept of “June” a body. Someone should actually play “June”. We were looking at each other asking those questions, scanning the room for inspiration. We had just come home from a visit to some friends or some kind of trip and Mona had her hair all curled and done up. She looked kind of summery. Friendly even. Mona, you’re gonna be June!

Our house in Austria is quite literally in the middle of nowhere in a 300 people strong village surrounded by fields. It doesn’t make for a buzzing night life but it DOES provide some beautiful locations, tranquil views and never ending, open horizons.

In the final video you can see blooming apple orchards, fields with rolled up hay bales and of course the infamous enormous rape seed fields. Let us tell you one thing – they might look pretty, but they smell like death. We filmed all the scenes at different times throughout the year, and the rapeseed was the last one we did. Fittingly, they usually bloom strongest in June.

Our Dad did the drone shots for the video while this time Lisa controlled the camera attached to it through the goggles. Whenever she moved her head, the camera would move as well. It’s a great way to shoot but especially if you’re not used to it, it can get nauseating quite quickly, especially with that smell up your nose.

And then the lightning struck

Now there’s something I hate to even write about. If it wasn’t for Michaela reminding me (Lisa typing) about this when I told her I was putting together a behind-the-scenes post about June, I would have blocked this out of my memory completely. Oh, the pain! It’s all rushing back. Why the melodramatic outburst?

Well, on another one of our filming excursions around the neighbourhood we had the best of luck. On the way home from an already very successful shoot we got caught in a CRAZY thunderstorm on the way home. Imagine dark purple clouds and enough rain that you felt like you could actually swim through the air. It was magnificent!

So we pulled over next to a lake we passed by, made Mona go into that lake (she would get soaked from the rain anyway, right? ;-)) and got some insane footage. The backdrop, the dark sky reflecting on the lake, rays of light still coming through in the distance, Mona’s slightly miserable expression, it all looked stunning! And don’t worry, there was no lighting. I mean we do prioritise getting great video footage over a lot of things but we draw the line at death by lightning.

Happy and soaked through to the underwear we made our way home. “A perfect March and April but raindrops fall today. Oh June, please come and take the rain away.”

And then the THING happened. The disaster. The big burn. The big data loss. Maybe the lightning should have struck Mona in that lake because it decided to come back later and hit our servers instead. A few weeks after we thought we had the video in the bag we had a lighting incident destroy a huge part of our server system, and of course it had to be the one with the best footage ever, one we would never be able to replicate.

We could have gone out to re-shoot a lot of the summery scenes, but having the luck of catching another warm summer downpour – no chance …

Anyway, soon our minds were taken off that disaster anyway as we had bigger things to deal with … MOVING TO THE UK!

The musical background

So we made it over to the UK safely, with a major car breakdown on the way though but thankfully without further data crash. We got settled in and started to get into the rhythm of making videos again.

We still hadn’t finished June yet so we decided to film the last bits of the video on the coast of Southport, north of Liverpool. The beach there is somewhat … unique. It’s a good mile deep and consists of dark sand, puddles and some patches of grass. Even if you squint you can hardly see the sea at the end of it.

The fact that the water is so far out at that stretch of the coast makes for a strangely unique backdrop which we think was perfect as a contrast to the summery scenes in Austria (the few that didn’t get lost and the others we had to redo).

We decided to keep it simple: An interesting spot of beach, two guitars, one camera and again, the drone.

Before we knew it, we were back home, cutting and editing and just in time for June 2014, everyone’s YouTube subscription pages got a little visitor. Finally, June has come along! 🙂

Stay groovy,
Mona & Lisa