During the Covid 19 lockdown, choirs needed a way to create, sing, and perform together. VOENA’s choir director asked me if I could do a virtual choir music video. I said, "Yes", of course.

On stage, choir members can fake it if they don’t know when to come in, or if they forget their part. In a virtual choir, each member has to record their part alone. There is no where to hide and if you don’t know your part, it is very obvious.

The audio you are hearing is really their recordings on their cell phones that they sent to me. I had to sync all 44 videos up together to create the final video.

I was given free rein and complete creative control. After listening to the song a couple of times, I knew what I wanted to do. The singers come and go to accent the beautiful lyrics and help carry the video visually, since the kids were very limited in their movement.

The girl who opens the video and the girl who closes the video are sisters. That is why there are two of them with the same sign on their walls, but wearing different colored shirts. It was a nice way to bookend the video.



As the world adjusted to the "new normal" of Covid 19, organizations began to put together virtual events. One current member and one alumnus are Iranian-American. There was an Iranian American Women virtual festival planned. Choir Director Annabelle brought this project to me.

This song is about a woman and a rose. As the woman holds the rose, she becomes so entranced by it that she forgets about the thorns and ends up getting pricked by one of the thorns.

This video was submitted to the festival organizers. They loved it so much they made it the showpiece of the event.

This was an inspired choice for a video during the Covid 19 lockdown. The Choir Director, Annabelle, developed the concept of this video. We worked very closely together to create this video. One of the things she said to me is that the video must have purpose. The purpose of this video was to let people know that although they were locked down and separated from family and friends, they were not alone.

Annabelle solicited videos from friends and relatives around the world to get the international feel of this video.

The video opens and closes with a darling little girl. She is clearly not feeling great, and maybe lonely, or even a little scared. With some coaxing, she starts to smile a little and tentatively waives. The video builds in momentum. You can feel it. At the end of the video, she is finally feeling secure enough to waive with a real smile.

The original artist, Forrest Blak, saw the video on youtube, commented on it, and eventually got on a Zoom meeting with the choir that lasted 2 hours.



How do you make the virtual choir video interesting? It’s just kids singing to their phones without moving around too much.

We experimented with moving the video blocks around. We also worked hard to feature each of the kids who did a little extra and really sang the feeling of the song.

This is one of the first videos where the kids are playing instruments and "making" the song, not just singing to music created by others.

In addition to singing and making the music, the kids created the clapping pattern that opens the video.

As you listen to this, remember the audio is un-touched. This was not recorded in a professional studio. This is just kids singing into their phones.