Winnipeg Lists The Rose Among Best Videos Of 2011

An article was brought to our attention from long-time digital friend Cameron posted on website called Paul's Winnipeg. Paul compiled his list of the best music videos of last year and we made a good impression:

Sarah Slean - The Rose 

I'm going to be honest with you: very few music videos, by any artist and in any genre, have ever moved me as much as "The Rose" did. This is what I was talking about when I mentioned the 'intangible marriage of music and visuals' in my introduction to Part 1. 

Sarah Slean's absolutely gorgeous song and its incredible lyrics meld cohesively with a concept that steadily becomes more brilliant the more you think about it to create something that you can't really describe in words, only in emotions. Emotions that aren't forced or melodramatic, just emotions that exist within us all; our hopes and our fears, our dreams and our desires, and our underlying wonder at the nature of the universe. 

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The Sisters Of Mercy Featuring Lucy Rupert, Sarah Slean

Click To View Full Sized

On the day of my parent's anniversary, I am happy to announce a forthcoming feature film project titled The Sisters Of Mercy. The story takes place in 1939, mere months before the Second World War, and is a narrative adaptation of an original dance performance called "The Animals Are Planning An Intervention" created and performed by two time FortyFPS collaborator Lucy Rupert. A review by 96.3 FM in Toronto said of Animals:

The Animals Are Planning An Intervention is performed to a gorgeous string quartet by composer Sarah Slean. Lucy Rupert uses expressive animal imagery to explore the evolution contained within us. It is a beautifully conceived show, rich in set, lighting and video details. Her theme is loss and recovery, and she actually makes her lyrical body look angled and distorted.

In the film adaptation, Rupert plays the lead role of a mother named Marie who is unknowingly hand-delivered to a government institution by her three sons after a house-fire, that Marie escaped, claimed the life of her 9 year old daughter. The Sarah Slean arrangements commissioned for Animals will be featured and used throughout the film. Announcements will continue to spill out leading towards production set for Fall 2011.

Celluloid Social Club Photos, Screens The Rose

As was recently mentioned, our video for The Rose played in front of a sold out Celluloid Social Club last Tuesday. Additionally making our night in millions of different ways was the arrival of Mr. Chris Gonzalez and Paula Lindberg - who never could have imagined shooting Narcolepsy what strange things were awaiting her 6 years later. Click here to view the photos from the night, taken by Bob Soska.

Celluloid Social Club To Honor The Rose, Leo Awards

Celluloid Social Club @ The Anza Club on W. 8th, Vancouver BC

Paul Armstrong, co-founder of the long-running and immensely popular Celluloid Social Club, messaged us and asked if The Rose would like to attend a Q&A screening with other recent Leo Award recipients at the next CSC event on Tuesday, June 21st. Which is a silly question that was instantly agreed to.

Paul is one of few people in this city who seems to be consistently pioneering every major development or successful event our branch of the industry has to offer. Entry starts at $5 and doors open at 7:30pm. This event is only once a month and always sells out fast making early arrival crucial.

"The Rose" Named Best Music Video Of 2010

The video made for Sarah Slean's song "The Rose" was awarded Best Music Video Of The Year at the Leo Awards.

I was unable to attend the ceremony and was notified via a txt that read: "You just won a Leo award!" from Katrin Bowen, director of the multi- award nominated feature film Amazon Falls.

Fellow 2006 Crazy8s alumni member and Phoenix co-star, Katrin took a considerable amount of her post-awards evening to ensure the award was looked after and eventually was the one to hand it to me, beaming - which made it all the more better. Thank you.

Thanks to the jury/industry members that voted for the video. This is a wonderful pat on the head and all involved appreciate it a great deal. Please feel free to check out the video by clicking here.

The Rose Nominated Best Music Video Of 2010

Adding a significant amount of extra icing onto our sappy story cupcake, our Sarah Slean video for The Rose has been nominated for a Leo Award in the Best Music Video category - the fourth nomination in as many years. The Leo Awards, in the words of Wikipedia, are...

...the awards program for the British Columbia film and television industry, celebrating excellence in artistic achievement. Held each May or June, the Leo Awards honour nominees and winners in 13 program categories and up to 19 craft categories. The Leo Awards Red Carpet continues to be the largest red carpet event in Western Canada attracting the glitterati of the BC film and television industry, including stars and celebrities from US-based productions.

The awards will be handed out at The Fairmont Hotel on Saturday, June 11th. If you have not seen the video, you can view it below or get the whole story by clicking here.

24 Hours Away From Making 21 Year Old CJ's Day

For whatever reason, I vividly remember every detail of the 4 minutes in 2002 when I happened to stumble upon the video debut of the song "Sweet Ones" by some 'new' hyper-active Canadian named Sarah Slean.

It marked the first time it occurred to me that I really wanted to make a music video for someone. I wrote her name down in red smelly-felt on a desk-sized scribble pad I had at the time and set it to the back of my mind to one day try to dazzle this person I didn't know existed 5 minutes previous.

I saw her countless times live afterwards and a couple years later in a bold, Jack Daniels soaked gesture - informed her of this lofty goal after her show at the Commodore Ballroom. She politely/warmly smiled and said whatever sweet things popular artists say when strange people tell them strange things. (She claims to have no recollection of this thankfully.)

It is nearly impossible for the people you enjoy and respect from a distance through film or music to live up to everything you've assumed and built them up to be if you are ever fortunate to get to meet them or collaborate together and Sarah is, and has been, all of it and more. Please enjoy a short clip of someone being effortlessly talented and relishing every second of it...Thank you for having me around. Xx

Sarah Slean's "The Rose" Video Release Revealed

This morning was greeted with an e-mail from our new best friend Jennifer at BravoFact! letting us know that, almost a year to the date it was finished, our Sarah Slean music video for "The Rose" has it's national broadcast date which, in turn, means it can be finally be released online!

The video will be embedded here and released on Monday, January 31st and will be accompanied by another incredible making-of documentary shot and edited by Jeffrey Zablotny. Please visit our Rose Project Page on our website for a bit of pre-release context and other potentially interesting things.

Last Flowers: Promotional Art

The Rose: Scribbled Index Cards

Some of you may recall our post back in March which showed the set design from our forthcoming Sarah Slean video as well as a useless low-resolution photo taken around 4am EST of the just-finished storyboards scribbled onto index cards for crew and clarity's sake.

As all parties involved continue to await an air date from the fine folks at BravoFact, I grabbed those index cards and took photos of them in sets of two at random and have uploaded them to our Flickr account. The quality, detail and size of each storyboard will vary based on the hour in the night in which they were created.

New Last Flowers Trailer 'Nobody Sleeps'

as we did with the circumference alternative trailer that was posted a little while ago, an abbreviated version of last flowers was created for a commercial agency. if you haven't seen the film, you can by clicking here.

The Rose: Six New Preview Stills

while we await the debut broadcast date from bravofact for our sarah slean video, six new preview/low resolution framegrabs have made their way up onto our flickr page. come have a look?

The Rose - More Behind The Scenes

20 more stills from the rose shoot in march have surfaced. these ones offer better looks at the set and various lighting set-ups. click here to view the stills.

there is still no word as to when bravofact will allow us to upload the video online at this point. rumor has it they loved the video a great deal and are trying to slot it in as early as possible into their schedule, unfortunately their schedule is often programmed a month or three in advance.

The Rose - Behind The Scenes Photos

the last week of wonderful things have all been due to the various efforts of jeffrey zablotny. the latest bit of delight has come in the form of 30 behind-the-scenes stills from the set of "the rose." click here to view the photoset on jeff's flickr page.

The Rose - Colored & Completed

after watching the video on the fancy monitors at finifilm, it was decided there wasn't much coloring to change after embellished a few small cues and a quick clean-up of minor things and now it is finished.

here are a few stills from the more low-key "chapter 3" of the video, where our starlet (lucy rupert) burns rose pedals for luck and is interrupted by a well dressed, kind-hearted older man. we are trying to save the "looks" of the other chapters for the broadcast/debut.

a behind-the-scenes documentary of the video shoot was shot by jeffrey zablotny who has done this daunting task previously on circumference ("hat trick") and last flowers ("wink"). the video and still photos from set will make their way online whenever we are allowed to do so.

The Rose - Front Page News

Sarah Slean posted a blurb about 'The Rose' shoot on the front page of her website this morning. In her words:

Sarah has teamed up again with the wunderkinds from Fortyfps and Major Street Productions - the group behind 2008's film "Last Flowers". After some scheduling difficulty, the shoot date was finally booked for March 5 in Toronto. BravoFact has generously supported the project, the aim of which was to ambitiously combine play-within-a-play storytelling, musical performance, and dance.

Sarah was particularly interested in working with Lucy Rupert again - the dancer behind last year's "Abecedarian" project, a solo piece that Sarah described as "riveting".

The video is being completed and released much later than the actual song's release (December 2008), but the project was such a congruence of creative people that Sarah assures us it will have been worth the wait.

editing has been completed and we are awaiting our coloring session which is set for the 9th. bravofact's grant we won essentially buys them first broadcast/premiere rights to the video so we are at the mercy of them as to when it can be released online. above is an uncorrected still image from the video. we will post a few more shortly.

The Rose - Sarah Slean

this friday we shoot a music video for sarah slean so we put up a drawing to give you a look at brian garvey's set we will be running around on and also a low resolution glimpse of a futon covered in index cards.