The Artist Explains: Melis - 'Piece Of Your Heart'
Melis talks to us about the visuals for her achingly beautiful electro pop single, ‘Piece Of Your Heart’ featuring a compelling expressive dance performance.
Following in the footsteps of ‘Waves’, ‘Piece Of Your Heart’ is the second emotive single to be revealed from Melis’ upcoming EP, ‘Undercurrent’.
Where was the video for ‘Piece Of Your Heart’ filmed?
We filmed this in a place called Swim in Prague, it’s an old swimming pool converted into a night club.
How does the video connect with the song?
This song is actually really dark and I felt that it had to be a night-time vibe for the video. I sat with the director Jakub Jirasek who suggested an expressive dance performance and we rolled with that idea. It portrays the feeling you get from listening to the song, driving in your car late at night. It doesn’t have an actual narrative or an end. Everyone might see something different in it.
Do you have anybehind the scenes stories you could share with us?
We actually had the best day shooting this video, all my closest friends from Prague came to the shoot, some of them play extras in it! It was great fun and pretty smooth. Watching Eugene, the main dancer, do his thing was amazing. The whole crew really pushed through and gave their everything. We were quite unlucky initially though as we were supposed to shoot in a different venue which cancelled on us one day before. Therefore we had to postpone the shoot and the entire crew onto a different date which was quite a mission. But i’m so pleased with the final result and love the location we ended up going with!
Can you tell us about the ideas/ themes/ imagery used?
We were inspired by Gaspar Noe latest movie Climax. I love the light design and the whole neon / night time feel.
In Piece Of Your Heart, there was so much precision in the choreography that Eugene came up with and I wanted to make sure it was the main focus of the video. The first time I saw him dance to my song, I had goose bumps and tears in my eyes and was 100% sure I wanted to work with him. I love how his movements mirror the lyrics. The whole idea just felt super organic and beautiful.
Is there a message the video is trying to convey?
The song is about being desperate to get someone else’s attention and affection.
Once me and the director started brainstorming, we realised that how most young people deal with that sort of emotion is by dancing and by going out at night, getting high or drunk. The expressive dancing in the video can be a metaphor to the feeling Piece Of Your Heart is about, but it doesn’t have to be. I hope that people will be able to relate to it and see themselves in it.