Renée Lusano

When Colleen Green was releasing her new album "Cool", she asked me to direct one of her music videos. She was pretty open to ideas about where and what to shoot, but she loved the No Doubt "Sunday Morning" music video, where the band prepares a spaghetti dinner with friends. At the time I had just become a certified sailing skipper, and we thought it would be a fun opportunity to shoot the video at sea on a sailboat, and around the marina. I brought on my friend and DP Gilles O'Kane, who agreed that it would look great to shoot a combination of digital video, camcorder, and 16mm film. I of course also wanted to get my drone up in the air to get shots of Colleen on the boat, and in the edit we could layer and collage all of the different types of video. What sounded like a short, straight-forward shot list, turned out to be a very challenging shoot day—because of the entire crew getting seasick in the choppy seas. I was not only the director, but I also needed to pilot (and safely land) my drone, meanwhile skippering the boat, and keeping everyone safe on board while sailing. What a crazy (but fun) shoot day!