Since 2006’s Visionary release; where I phoned Sony to express my dis-satisfaction at the frankly feeble attempt of promotion, I’ve always been of the mind-set: “If you wanna see Michael promoted, you’ve got to do it yourself”. In the past I’ve worked with the MJVibe team in London to make Michael’s releases visible: slapping up posters all over the city, we used to dance too…but that now requires more energy than I can muster. When Xscape was announced we’d already agreed that it was business as usual for us. We had no idea how extensive Sony’s promotion would be…but a little extra never hurts. The question on my mind was “how can we make this different to all the other times? How can we make a statement?”
With Mayah on speakerphone and Seb in the room, the three of us began verbally brainstorming: “What about hiring a van, covering it in Xscape imagery and driving round the UK?”…No! “What about an Xscape pod where we video people coming in to share their thoughts on the album?”…No! “What about getting a stack of flyers and throwing them off a building in London?”…. Now this, we liked! Our idea developed… “But tying in 6 minutes of music with us slapping stickers on walls might get boring”…. The room went silent….”what about like that Black Eyed Peas video ‘Where is the Love?’…but based on the lyrics we need to make it more of a chase….getting away from the system etc. Like the beginning of Step Up 2“… And the idea was born.
That Saturday, Rich joined us for a 4 hour session where we created the storyboards for the entire song. A lot of ideas were thrown around and equally thrown out! After some toasted bagels, litres of Lucozade and some weird ‘chocolate flavoured cheese’ (which was disgusting!) we were ready. The Black Eyed Peas video had been on loop for at least half that time!
Calling in the help of some talented friends, we scheduled the storyboard in to 2 weeks, filming each evening after work and on the weekends, the latter allowing us to try out different ideas…”When he says ‘they pin lies on my name’, why don’t I put a sticker on his back…like pinning Xscape to his name?”….”What about if I swing on this?” “How about I jump up that?” We worked against extreme heat and torrential rain, but all the shots were successfully uploaded on to computers at the end of the night. It was exciting to see the video growing right before my eyes.
The most difficult scene to film was in the lift and not because of the practicalities of working in a confined space that moved! It was that damn Xscape head dress! It was a nightmare to make and was stapled and pinned in every conceivable place, but the end result worked perfectly. The entire time our mantra was to push the boundaries of our capabilities, which was always Michael’s attitude. We’d never taken on a challenge this big before but everyone involved was having fun and it felt great to see everyone so excited about promoting Xscape.
The response to the video has since been overwhelming: we reached over 4,000 views on Vimeo in the first 3 days and it was shared and uploaded on
RenRen where it was seen by over 2,000 people. Freshly placed on YouTube, it’s passed 100 views and climbing! The emails, tweets and comments have been so kindand supportive and it means so much to all of us that you enjoyed the fruits of our labour. Xscape has given the fan community reason to unite, enjoy and be entertained and I’m so glad that your reception to the video has allowed us to be a part of that!
Pez
Vimeo Link – http://vimeo.com/94842977
