Young creative minds at UCOL pair up for music video project
The music video for a new single from an emerging Manawatū singersongwriter will fittingly have its premiere at a UCOL end-of-year function.
The video for CeCe McMillan’s Desert Angels, shot in the sand dunes between Foxton and Himatangi beaches, was a class assignment for visual arts student Josh Daniel.
It will be screened for the first time at Globe Theatre tonight when McMillan and her fellow UCOL music certificate and diploma students present their end-of-year performance, before being available on YouTube and other social media.
The 19-year-old McMillan, who won top solo act at the Manawatū finals of the 2021 Smokefreerockquest and is completing her certificate-level studies at UCOL, said she was excited to have Desert Angels picked for the project, a song she had only recently written.
Daniel had been provided a range of songs from the music students.
“He was unsure which one to pick. And I said, ‘well, I’ve actually got another song I’m working on at the moment, that I’ve been doing in the background by myself’,” McMillan said.
“For him it was a project for his course. For me it was an opportunity.”
Daniel said the brief to shoot a music video stood apart from the other assignments, and the chance to collaborate with another creative held huge appeal to him.
The music video cuts together scenes of McMillan singing among the windswept dunes, and under the glow of lights back at UCOL, combining both her desire to capture a sense of longing in a desert scene, and Daniel’s studio sensibilities. “It was a challenge, but it was fun,” McMillan said. “We both had different ways that we viewed the song.
Photography is his main thing and he loves studio lighting.
“Seeing those different ideas and different views for my music video was quite cool, especially coming from another creative mind.”
There was also the advantage of Daniel being a lifeguard, which meant they could access the surf lifesaving club and use its beach buggy to access filming locations, and his knowledge of the tides was put to good use.
While it was hoped the full video would garner interest on YouTube, McMillan anticipated shorter cuts appealing to audiences on TikTok.
“For Tiktok it’s quite an intensive thing. You have to make sure you have something really attention-grabbing for them to look at it. I just really want those little snippets to tell a story.” She said Desert Angels could be interpreted in different ways. For her, it was a longing for something just out of reach.
The song was written and tracked in a single four-hour studio session.
“I was like a machine. I did the entire song, start to finish, in like four hours. All the vocals, all the mini-components were done. It just had to be mixed and mastered.”
The song exemplified McMillan’s development through the year-long certificate course, both in performance and the recording process.
“I knew how to sing a song and how to play the keys, but I didn’t know how to put other instruments in.
“I didn’t know how to put it all together. But this year, it’s really taught me how to put everything in one song. It’s been really fun.”