No, nothing to do with music. At least not yet. I designed the website for the new movie Paris Connections by American star author Jackie Collins. Produced by the production team of blockbusters like the Golden Compass and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the movie will be released in May and feature many stars including Charles Dance (Alien, Last Action Hero, Gosford Park), Nicole Steinwedell (The Unit, Single Man), Anthony Delon.
There is also news on the music front. The single Cam Girl will go into distribution this weekend and première on Dutch radio next week.
My co-operation with director Philip Gardiner is getting yet another episode. Today I finished the title song for a new movie called ‘Cam Girl’. Filming will start next week and the release is planned for just after the summer. It is a Film Noir production that will be released only on DVD around July of this year. The script for the film was written by Philip and John Symes.
The movie, that will be an experimental one in many ways, will launch new British actress Layla Randle-Conde onto the scene. The song is as melancholic as I they come. It was a short and emotional process to write it. Just a piano, a cello and some strings to sketch a musical landscape for a single vocal line.
Today I heard I have been nominated for an Interactive Music Award. I am among five acts nominated for this prize, which is awarded every year to an artist or band that has distinguished himself/itself by using new and innovative ways of music promotion and marketing. An 5-headed jury will decide on the winner this Friday 15th January after all acts have given a 3-minute presentation of their concept. The concept I’ll be bringing to the table is my Mystery Pop project: writing a song for a bestselling Author based on a bestselling book. If the author likes or even loves the song, they will actively promote it and introduce me to their reader audiences.
I could not illustrate how Mystery Pop works any better than by what happens today. Since 20% of the jury’s verdict will be made up by votes on the Interactive Awards website, ‘my’ Mystery authors today supported me by inviting their readers and fans to vote for me on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. The message was also put up on the website for the upcoming movie The Stone, in which I will be playing a part soon.
Kathleen, Philip, Patrice, Filip, Philippa, Andrew, Martin: thank you so much for your continued support of my work and mobilizing your friends and fans today. Thank you everybody who has already taken the trouble go to the website to vote for me. It’s special when you are prepared to do that for me and I do not take that lightly.
If you haven’t voted yet, you would really help me by casting your vote behind this link.
(pst….make sure you select all 5 stars as it will give me more votes..and don’t tell anyone…)
PRESS RELEASE
London, 4th January 2010
Dutch singer/songwriter Corjan will feature in a new British Psychological Thriller movie titled ‘The Stone’.
The Stone is a movie production by bestselling author and award winning film maker Philip Gardiner who will be the director and co-wrote the script with John Symes. The film will be released in 2010 to festivals across the world before being distributed on major release.
In the film, Corjan will play himself in and will perform his single “Haunting me down” which he wrote especially for the occasion. His show will be filmed on an abandoned RAF airbase near Rendlesham, United Kingdom that previously served as the backdrop for StarWars and Mission Impossible.
Gardiner and Corjan got in touch as a result of Corjan’s Mystery Pop project, an upcoming album full of songs each inspired by a bestselling international Mystery book and and endorsed by its author. Corjan wrote a song inspired by Philip Gardiner’s book ‘The Bond Code’ and performed in his talkshow on SKY TV last year.
The film ‘The Stone’ will feature special effects by the same team who produced ‘Shaun of the Dead´ and actors such as Tony Scannell (The Bill), Bunny Reed (Hammer) and several unnamed A-list actors a.o. from the Harry Potter cast.
In the film, Corjan will perform alongside Staffordshire Rock Band ´No Redemption´ of Gemma Simpson and James Earnshaw who will also do the musical direction.
For more info check The Stone Official Movie Website
2010 is going to be a busy year. After my work for the Back Slasher movie, I got involved with another British movie production, working title ‘The Stone’. It will be directed by award winning film maker Philip Gardiner. I can’t tell you anything about the script yet. What I can say is that it will be a psychological thriller with a twist in the tail and some great actors including Tony Scannell from the British police series The Bill and Chris Rankin who plays Percy Weasley in the Harry Potter films.
Besides me doing a song and maybe a signature theme I was asked to actually play a small part alongside these heroes. Now there’s an offer one shouldn’t lightly refuse so after thinking for about half a second I gave the ‘I will’. The producers have reserved a big amount to get the movie on the major festivals and on TV so we should be in for some fun. The shooting is planned to start some time in January.
In the last week I have been working on a signature track for the upcoming movie Back Slashers. Directed by British director Tim Cowley, this social networking horror movie deals with the story of Becca, a girl with an addiction for blogging and everything internet. Attracted by the possibility to generate fast cash, she starts selling adult toys on the web. When a seemingly unconnected string of murders happens, the only thing that ties them together appears to be Becca’s online friends list. In the end Becca discovers the chilling secret behind the murders and the connection to her social networks.
Back Slasher is special in a number of ways. It is a no-budget movie in the tradition of Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity. It’s raw and it’s in your face. At the same time it has a message for everybody out there who spends a lot of time on social network sites like Facebook, Twitter – you name them. Yours truly is as guilty of that as the next guy. The movie will be released in the course of next year in the US, Canada and Europe.
The song I wrote for this movie is called “Kill my Darlings”. It’s a mid-tempo spooky haunting song. At this stage we’re still considering what the best time is to release this song as a single.
Back Slasher is not the only movie I am involved with at the moment. In January, filming starts for a great British production, involving some very well known actors. For this movie I will not only write the title song, but I will actually play a cameo role.
In the coming weeks, the 4th single will be released in the Mystery Pop series. The song was inspired by the book The Masonic Magician by the wonderful British authors Philippa Faulks and Robert L.D. Cooper. The book deals with the life and death of the 18th century adventurer Allessandro Cagliostro, cult figure of European society in the tumultuous years leading to the French Revolution. An alchemist, healer and Freemason, he inspired both wild devotion and savage ridicule as well as artists like Alexandre Dumas, Mozart and Goethe. Cagliostro was above all a Freemason, who introduced an Egyptian rite of immortality. He appears to have thought he was immortal himself. Sadly, he was proven wrong by the Holy Inquisition who condemned him to death for being a Mason.
The Masonic Magician tells Cagliostro’s extraordinary story, complete with the first English translation of the Egyptian Rite ever published. The authors examine the case made against him, that he was an impostor as well as a heretic and finds that the Roman Church, and history itself, have done him a terrible injustice.
I wrote this atmospheric uptempo song from Cagliostro’s perspective, overthinking his life in his cold stone prison cell. He is said to have been shouting his wife’s name at night, the same wife that probably betrayed him to the Church. He knew he would die and hoped he had achieved immortality through the rite.
Something’s been brewing in the last couple of weeks. While I was suffering from a severe flu, my songs have done a lot of work for me. After they had seen my performance on SKY Controversial TV and heard the three songs I have written so far in my Mystery Pop project, California based media company Reality Entertainment and British Mass Marketing guru Martin Faulks concluded that we should team up for success. We believe that we are truly complementary as artist, label and marketeer.
Reality Entertainment is owned by legendary rock producer Warren Croyle who has worked with a diverse array of artists such as the Outpatience with Guns and Roses to Roy Hay of Culture Club not to mention Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden, Paul Kelly, Godhead, Marcy Playground, Warrior, Face to Face and many more.. How Reality Entertainment came into being is nicely described in this article. At present Reality has some of America’s best metal acts in its porfolio combined with more mainstream bands like KC and the Sunhine Band. What I like best about Reality Entertainment is their no-nonsense approach and their thorough understanding of today’s media landscape. They are groundbreaking and a healthy firm in a sick industry. Working with Reality enables me to launch my songs and upcoming Mystery Pop album to an enormous audience in the US, the UK and basically the rest of the world.
Martin Faulks will guide me on the way as far as promotion is concerned. Martin, is an independent marketing and mass media specialist. He also has a heart for the music industry and publishing. To illustrate that he currently runs the promotion for another legendary music producer. Peter Waterman’s book The Fame Factor is an easy to follow step by step guide to the formula that helped Pete to make Kylie Minogue, Steps and Bananarama household names. Talking about learning it from the best…
We have decided we are not in a hurry. I’ll keep writing songs for bestselling Mystery authors until we have enough material for an album, after which we’ll dress up for battle. As a first step on the way, Reality Entertainment will produce a video clip for my latest song in the Mystery Pop project: the Bond Code. After City of Secrets, this is really the song that opened the door for me. The song will be available in all the major online stores in a couple of weeks and is already now on Amazon.com.
From now on, my artist name will be “Corjan”. I will drop “De Raaf”, (which wasn’t actually even my real last name).
Never in a million years could I have imagined that I’d ever get the chance to sign up with a significant American label, let alone on equal terms. I now know you can feel very small and very big at the same time.
On with the show!
