Royal in the ice

On June 14, Crocus City Hall will be performed by one of the most commercially successful American crossover groups The Piano Guys , which performed at the inauguration of Donald Trump. On the piano and cello, they replay pop hits, combining them with recognizable topics from classical works, but became famous, first of all, thanks to their spectacular video clips, which were shot on the Great Chinese wall, at the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio and other unusual places. Yegor Antoshchenko talked with the director of the clips The Piano Guys Paul Anderson, who is the creator of the group, and learned the details of the adventures of their piano in the jungle and among the ice.

For me, the story of The Piano Guys began with my piano store. I tried different ways to sell tools on the Internet: I uploaded videos with pianists, I started you t ube channel, site. First, I met John Schmidt, who is now playing the Piano Guys on the piano: I wanted to take his concert in one of the theaters. Then he introduced me to the cellist Steve Sharp Nelson and El Van der Biku, who arranges music for the group. We made friends and decided to try to work together.

Before working with Piano Guys, I did not have an extensive experience in shooting a video, and I still study something, shooting clips: I open You T Ube , I find out how to make some special effects. Previously, we resorted to the help of third -party operators, for example, to shoot a drone, but now we are taking off everything together with my assistant. I really want to allocate more time for each video. To remove a week or two, to mount a month - to do everything with accuracy as I plan. But we have to work in hard time frames: we still have concerts, tours, records - this is a separate and huge job.

The development of the group was so fast and it began to occupy so much time that I had to just part with my piano store. I could sell it for 750 thousand dollars, maybe even for a million. But I just closed the store, leaving myself tools. I have about 30 piano left, which can be used in group clips.

We are constantly looking for new places for filming. If your readers have ideas about crazy places in Russia, where you can bring the piano and remove the beautiful video clip, it would be just great.

1. Royal at the top of the cliff

"Paradise"

Filmed in the south of Utah. More than 61 million views

We shot this video in mid -January. In the south of Utah, a rather warm climate is almost like in Las Vegas. But that day it was still a little cool. I live just a few miles from the mountain on which the action takes place. Initially, we wanted to shoot this video on the golf field: green grass and red mountains behind. But on the eve of this, my friend called me and offered to fly over this place by helicopter. And I saw this mountain from above and said: “How great it would be to put the piano at this top!” He replied: "I have another friend with a helicopter, he can help us with this." And when the musicians came to the shooting, they realized that they would have to climb the mountain. We started shooting, and I noticed that my hands were shaking because I did not eat all day - we forgot about food in a hurry. But that guy flew in a helicopter to buy us lunch, - he just took it and landed in the parking lot before the eatery!

Many people think that we are taking off the clips for a long time, but we try to work quickly to spend more time with families. Often ideas are born as in the case of this clip - literally on the go. The budget of this video amounted to about $ 3000.

2. Royal in the ice

"Frozen"

Filmed in an ice castle in Utah. More than 76 million views

We shot this clip in one day. It all started with the fact that my family and I just went to look at this castle on the weekend. At the same time, the Disney cartoon "Cold Heart" came out - and I thought that music from it would have been well combined with the views of this place. The castle was built for three whole months, it was collected from pieces of ice one after another - about 5,000 ice per day. He is not the only one in the country, similar to the Colorado, in Wisconsin - these are places for family vacations, holding weddings and so on.

Filming took place in the last days of February, so it was not so cold - I think about 0 degrees Celsius. We used two piano: one was broken, it simply played the role of an ice art object. The second that John Schmidt played was used - it cost about 10 thousand dollars. But then we had to cover it with carbon fabric, replace the entire “filling”, the keys that deteriorated due to temperature ... In general, we rarely use written-off or used tools in our clips. The clip was shooting one day, a week left for installation: even if we manage to do faster, we leave ourselves for some time for small adjustments.

3. Royal in a distant galaxy

"Cello Wars (Star Wars Parody)"

Filmed on the "Green Screen". More than 37 million views

We did not have to pay the huge money of George Lucas for using special effects from Star Wars, because we said in the description of the video that this is a parody of the film. If we were going to publish this video for DVD , we would have to pay for it-but you can upload parodies or, for example, cover versions for free on You T Ube . But we had to pay for the use of each musical theme from the Star Wars - and there are five of them in this video. Fortunately, our Sony Music label helped to obtain permission to use John Williams' music.

The video itself was shot quite quickly, in just one day. But we spent six months on installation. Then, with the installation of The Piano Guys, Tel Stuart helped, which studied the tools of post -processing video directly in the course of work. That is, already on the shot, he learned to draw light swords (they had to be drawn using Photoshop in each frame) - he watched videos on the Internet, read articles on how this is done. Therefore, this work took such a huge amount of time.

4. Royal on the Great Chinese Wall

"Kung Fu Piano"

Filmed on the Great Chinese wall. More than 18 million views

Now we are releasing clips united in the series “Wonders of the World”, and we plan to shoot one video from each of the seven great world monuments. It began with the fact that I was asked in one interview: “You all the time shoot the piano in unexpected places: either at the top of the mountain, then in the midst of ice. Where will you shoot next time? " And I took and said that I dream of putting him on the Great Chinese wall. To be honest, I could not even think that it would ever happen. But it turned out that through the dating chain we managed to get permission to shoot in China. It was a whole story. We hired a forwarding company to deliver the piano to the wall. Then 25 Chinese movers dragged him up the steps up - and raised it by about 1000 steps. We were given only six hours to shoot. Imagine how it feels to fly half a world in order to work for only half a day? But we surprisingly just received permission to shoot from the authorities. Usually getting it is real luck, I sit on the phone for days on the phone for days so that everything will turn out in the end. It is not so easy to come and erect a piano on the famous cultural monument. We have to make great efforts and persuade so many people.

5. Royal in Peter

"Indiana Jones Rocks Petra"

Filmed in the city of Peter (Jordan). More than 3 million views

We spent only five days in Jordan, two of which took the road. The problem with this clip was that we could only shoot in the earliest morning and before sunset. Firstly, during the day the sun shines mercilessly there. Secondly, the park is full of people-its cross-country ability is about 70 thousand people. I probably slept in all these five days only seven hours: at night it was necessary to charge batteries for the camera and drone. The drone could well crash into the rock, because it was manually controlled, without any GPS .

We filmed one episode in the market, which was in a not very prosperous area. Stephen just sat there with his cello, and we began to shoot him and the reaction of others. At some point, one guy tried to take away my case for cello. The atmosphere was a little nervous. I don’t know if we really threatened something serious, but while working there I felt that we were definitely in the binding. The dirty part of the market fell into the frame, which then had to be cleaned with special effects, so the installation took a little longer than usual - two weeks.

6. Royal in the jungle

"Sarabande"

Filmed in the city of Chichen-Iza. More than 4 million views

It was probably the most crazy clip of those that we did - and I still do not understand how it happened. We arrived in Mexico, having no confirmation and approvals, and organized shooting literally on the go. The whole trip took only four days: in the first we planned the shooting, in the second we began to shoot, while thinking where we would go to the next one. Only personal acquaintances helped us get permission from the government in such a short time and set the piano against the background of the Kukulkan pyramid. We were incredibly lucky.

In addition to the “Mayan” Chichen-Its, we shot part of this video in the Xcaret immersive park, which is located right in the jungle: you can ride rafts there, look at the Caribbean from the observation tower, go to the People’s Art Museum. Pathers and a serpent on the piano in this video are real, a bear and monkeys we had to insert from another shooting on a “green screen”. We simply could not find suitable animals in Mexico - although, frankly, I would have changed the bear that got into the clip if I could.

For four days we were very tired of the heat and movements, besides, mosquitoes bit us, and we arrived home in red spots-perhaps we were poisoned with something. But I still remember this as a real adventure.