How I Filmed a Music Video in Florianópolis, Brazil
The main concept in “Tower Hill” is “the other side”. What does “the other side” mean to you? Is it a happy meeting place with all your lost loved ones in the afterlife? Is it welcoming someone you care deeply about to the other side of addiction? Is it finally going on your bucket list trip, and finding yourself left in awe of all the world’s wonders? Is it a place of perfect being, where there is no division in society, no fighting or violence, just a state of endless beauty and bliss? To me, “the other side” is all of these things. I wrote “Tower Hill” in the heart of the pandemic. When we all had too much time alone to think, and spent long periods of time in social isolation. The ending of the song is a simple reminder, a mantra to be kind to ourselves and others. To not fear the future, no matter how uncertain and scary it may feel at the time.
When I first stepped foot in the magical town of Armação, I knew I had metaphorically reached the other side. I knew it was where I would film a music video for “Tower Hill”. I spent the coming weeks making day trips down to the natural cove in paradise, creating a storyboard for the music video I dreamed of filming. I knew who I wanted to film it, and I knew who I wanted to edit it. The walls of my apartment were lined with stunning drone photography from Thai Okumura Vinaver, or who I would come to know as Thai (follow Thai on Instagram @thai_filmmaker). I remember thinking to myself, “it would be so special if I could have Thai film the “Tower Hill” music video.” Eventually, I worked up the courage to reach out to Thai. He was interested. Then things took a turn on the magic island.
I sprained my ankle, and Thai came down with a pretty serious illness. I was all but certain the filming wasn’t going to happen. Time was running out on my trip and when our situations finally started to improve, the weather decided not to cooperate. Florianópolis is in the south of Brazil, and it was already early fall. The southerly winds can swoop in and easily make it impossible to fly a drone for the day. The rains have their way of halting filming as well. It was coming down to the wire. When our bodies, and the weather weren’t cooperating, neither were our payment options. We couldn’t find a quick and easy way to do an international money transfer. There is no Venmo in Brazil! PayPal is expensive, and Thai’s credit card reader wasn’t working. Finally, on the only day left in my trip with fair weather, I managed to transfer the payment in full to a family member of Thai’s in the States. We still hadn’t met in person yet! Right when the payment hit, Thai rushed to pick me up in Campeche. By the time we arrived in Armaçao, it was already late afternoon. We only had about four hours of sunlight left! On top of this, we didn’t even know each other. It was quite the feat. My greatest fear was, how are all the locals and tourists who hike to the gorgeous island we’re filming on going to react? Personally, I’m not a fan of drones, especially when in nature and trying to enjoy golden hour as the sun sets behind the tropical Brazilian hills.
Turns out everyone was wonderful, well, except for that guy wearing a wrestling mask who ran up behind me while we were filming on the boardwalk. Hey, at least he didn’t tackle me! Dozens of hikers, nature lovers, and locals moved out of the way to let us film on top of the majestic granite hill. People even gave us distance as we rushed to set up the drone as the sun was setting behind the luscious green hills. They all stayed in a group more towards the top of the island, and respected what we were doing. I was shocked. I had the thought, this would never happen in the States! In fact, I was well prepared to be told we couldn’t film there, or have people yell at us. However, we were following all laws, and everyone on the island was cool. For this reason, Thai wanted to film for sunrise, but to me, Armação was a sunset paradise. We both had no idea how the afternoon and evening would turn out, and I’m so thankful we were able to achieve the vision I was dreaming of. Nonetheless, filming was only the first half of the equation.
Matt Nemetz at Focal Fuse designed the album artwork for “Tower Hill”. He used a picture I took in Paraty, Brazil. I’ve always admired Matt’s work, and was really hoping he could edit the video. I knew he liked the song, and I loved his work, so it was a no brainer. When I first approached Matt in May, he was booking a few months out due to all the projects he was working on. In July, I uploaded approximately thirty drone and Sony camera videos to Dropbox. Just a few weeks later Matt had finished the video! I knew it was a huge undertaking, since each video not only needed to be carefully edited, but also color corrected, and color graded. Matt even zoomed in on certain drone shots to match the exact lyrics I was singing to the video footage. It was such a pleasure to work with him, I highly recommend his company, Focal Fuse, for any of your video, logo, and/or branding needs. Check out Focal Fuse’s website here: https://focalfuse.com/.
My patience finally paid off. A vision I had in February, before I left for Brazil, finally came true in July. I’m looking forward to sharing this project with you all on Tuesday, August 22nd. If you want to see it now, along with behind the scenes footage of the video shoot, you can subscribe to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/jeffreyjames. Otherwise you can subscribe to my YouTube Channel to be sure you see it on August 22nd! Subscribe to The Jeffrey James Show’s YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/thejeffreyjamesshow. Thanks for your support! Tchau!