If creatives live to make things, Adil Jain is the ultimate creative. He had been a professional photographer in Delhi for many years before he moved to Australia and has been a director for fourteen. In 2020, he became executive producer at Goodman Brothers until Covid closed that door. Meanwhile, he documented the aftermath of the 2019-2020 NSW bushfires in photographs through creative passion, and Last November he received the National Emergency Medal for helping with disaster relief assistance with Team Rubicon Australia in Proserpine QLD after tropical cyclone Debbie, another job he did on the side. Jain has also been composing music for many years and wrote an entire musical with 45 songs between 2016 and 2018, which became part of the 2018 Sydney Fringe Festival.

Now he has combined his love of music and his skills as a director to compose a love ballad and direct its music video. Some of you will already understand the grit, guts and determination to make it happen on a very thin shoestring.

The Stable asked Jain to tell the story of how the music video came into being. Because it awed its editor – me. And because I played a teensy-tiny part in its coming together.

Adil Jain: This story began in late 2019 when I bought a lovely Taylor GS mini (mahogany) guitar. The rich, warm, luscious tonality inspired me to write the basic melody line, which was simple; but I knew it had a lot of soul. I’d been composing for years, mostly as a hobby until I wrote my first musical, which was new and slightly outside my comfort zone, being a career photographer and ad filmmaker. 

This time, I wanted to write a mainstream jazzy-pop-ballad that conforms to the rules of pop-song structure, timing and tempo. What could I do within that tried and tested format and still make something soulful, rich and original?

The Stable: How did it come about? How did it go from an idea to production?

AJ: I created my home recording on Garageband. For those unfamiliar with the process, you lay down the tracks one by one to a metronome – piano, drums, strings, voice, horns, etc – to where it sounds good but you know it’s not ‘radio worthy’. That’s when you would typically step into a studio with your band or sessions musicians that you’ve hired. Except by the time the song was structurally ready, it was October 2020 and the world was in the middle of a pandemic. So, I found a remote option out of Portugal called Musiversal. It has a panel of handpicked talent that one can get access to by signing up for the service. 

Even up to this point it had become highly collaborative. My childhood friend in India (a terrific guitarist) helped me by contributing the chorus section. I had the intro, verse, bridge and outro at the time, but the chorus was missing. When he sent it, it fitted perfectly. And, although I had written an entire musical not so long ago, I just wasn’t getting the right lyrics, so I reached out on Facebook. A young chap in New Zealand heard my demo and sent me something within 45 minutes which fitted like a glove. My brief to him was “it’s a love song, about longing, a journey song.”

Then I had my one-on-one recording sessions with an incredible bunch of musicians scattered in different parts of the world over Zoom. These were done in the middle of the night Sydney time while it was daytime in Lisbon (singer and bass player), London (piano, Wurlitzer and Hammond organ) and Colorado (drums). 

So, there I was sitting at my laptop with my headphones on, listening to these incredibly talented musicians playing their instrument for the song – with all of their training and skill and grace and timing. They had all heard the demo and they all loved it, so my brief to them was, “have fun with it!” And they did. I just sat there with a dumb grin on my face and goosebumps all over my arms. I then found a mixing and mastering engineer in the UK who helped put it all together. 

TS:  Tell me about making the video?

AJ: Once the music was ready, I knew I needed to make a video with dancers. I love working with dancers and this was the perfect opportunity to do something lyrical, sensuous, poetic. Candide introduced me to Victor Zarallo and Allie Graham, both incredible dancers, who came on board because they loved the song. The challenge with the video was the fact that I wasn’t telling a specific or linear story. How would I capture the essence of the song without it being literal to the lyrics? How would I make it sad without making it sad?

TS:  Challenges and “gifts” making the video?

AJ: The only challenge in making the video was that I was trying to do everything myself – shoot, direct, edit, grade – which was fine, but I’m sure it could have been better if I had brought in other professionals. The advantage was I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like, so I didn’t have to explain it, I just did it. 

The “gifts” are the magical moments that happen. When I met the dancers, I knew I wanted to do the camera tracking move along the arms. In fact, when I first met them, I shot it with them on my phone to show them what I was talking about. I think that’s when they understood my vision and trusted me completely after that. In the final video, the last “arms” shot coincides with what I think are the most magical notes that the pianist hits at 4.11 – 4.12 mins. It all came together really nicely, mostly by design and partly by luck and instinct. 

A number of people have already written in to share that the music and video brought a tear to their eye. That, to me, is so incredible. Especially in today’s media savvy, content-saturated world.

TS: What strengths, skills and experience did you draw on to make it? 

AJ: I’ve been working as an advertising photographer for over 20 years, including 14 years as an ad film director and producer – so you could say that I have been building my visual and story-telling craft for a long time. This was my first ever music video. 

My music is informed half by western pop, rock, jazz, classical and half by Indian classical, film, and folk. I would say my greatest influences are RD Burman, Quincy Jones, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, Randy Crawford and many others.

While I’ve only had a couple of years of piano, a year of saxophone, and a couple of years of voice training, I think that has worked in my favour. And I know what I like, I know what I want, and I know what I’d like my lovely collaborators to use in their vast arsenal of talent – to be able to ask my incredible singer to sing the lines “almost late”, to ask my keyboardist to lay down a bed of harmonies with the Wurli and Hammond, to ask my bass player to build the framework (with this bass lines) upon which the rest of the song will be built. 

It has been a truly collaborative experience and I couldn’t have done it without the genuinely enthusiastic participation of my collaborators, to whom I am eternally indebted and grateful. I hope the song and the video bring people a moment of joy in this crazy world.

A personal thank you

I want to thank Victor Zarallo and Allie Graham. Victor choreographed and performed in the video while also performing in Grimm at Riverside Theatre in Sydney, Allie while travelling between Sydney and Melbourne to perform in Aida with Opera Australia. They did it because they, too, are ultimate creatives who live to make things – and awesome talents. [:ed]