My Mystery Pop project hasn’t gone completely unnoticed. The idea to make an album full of songs, endorsed by bestselling Mystery Authors has struck a chord somewhere.

The Video clip for the Patrice Chaplin song City of Secrets (the Grail in you) will be released as a bonustrack on the forthcoming DVD “The Initiation of Alice in Wonderland”. The distribution is in the hands of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment. The DVD will be in the shops around Christmas and deals with the life of Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Caroll. Carroll was the enigmatic man who created a magical and surreal reality populated by characters mined from the depths of his imagination. Were they simple tales of fantasy to entertain children or something considerably more profound?

Everyone knows that Johnny Depp plays the Mad Hatter in the Tim Burton film, Alice in Wonderland, but few know of the amazing man who first imagined the world of Alice in Wonderland. The film makers explore the wonderful world of Lewis Carroll and for the first time delve deep into the mind of the man to discover the hidden mysteries and meanings behind his incredible creations.

You can watch the trailer of the DVD on Youtube through this link.

So proud of this video…..

Yesterday, I had the first screening of the City of Secrets Video. Maurice Bossers, the editor, has done a marvellous job. I think he succeeded to create a story in moving images around my song. He has blended dirty black and white images of myself with bright red images from the Patrice Chaplin’s Siesta movie. The focus is particularly on Ellen Barkin, who wears a great red dress. We have used the church and confession scenes and some footage of Ellen running through the corridors of a dark hotel. The old Siesta scenes work really well with the material we shot in Amsterdam last week. To emphasize the spiritual nature of the song and the quest for the woman in the video, Maurice has given me sort of a halo which looks quite cool I think. The editing is not too flashy but really does justice to the story I want to tell which I consider a great accomplishment by the editor.

I have added a gallery to the photo page with 25 stills form the video. It is now being micro-edited and mastered so we can send it off to SKY to be included in my performance on the Gardiners World talkshow that will be televized in a couple of weeks.

On Sunday 4th October we have been filming for the video clip of my song City of Secrets (iTunes), the song I wrote for Hollywood author Patrice Chaplin. The “we” in this case is Director John Nieland, Producer and Camera guy Dennis von Ende, a small crew and myself. This video clip will have its world premiere on the Gardiners World TV show on SKY Controversial TV that is dedicated to my work and which will be broadcasted in about 6 week’s time in the UK and later in the US. I was filmed singing, wandering the busy Sunday streets on several locations in the heart of Amsterdam. John is a man with enormous drive and energy. He also had a very clear vision of what the clip needed to look like. Dennis was the perfect guy to put it on camera. Calm and patient, with a rare love for detail. Even though this was their first project together, it felt like we had been working together for a long time.

This experience was a first for me in many respects. Not only is it the first video clip I have ever made, it was also the first time that I presented myself so directly and closely to the public, singing and with some bits of dancing. In the clip, we try to capture the lively big city atmosphere of Amsterdam. We have been filming in HQ cinema format, which will be edited into a moody black&white. During the edit we will also use scenes from Patrice Chaplin’s 1987 Hollywood movie Siesta. Together the images will tell the story of unanswered love which is the theme of the song. I hope the video will truly echo the desolation, the big city atmosphere and the interaction I have had with the public.

I could never have realized this video without the tremendous help and support of the Dutch Camera College. Run by veteran cameraman Maurice Bossers, this institute specializes in training people in the media and television industry to the highest production standards. Maurice will be responsible for editing the video clip. His is the gargantuan task of ploughing through the more than 3,5 hours of video and make it into an apple pie. I am very happy that I can draw on his long experience and creativity. The clip will be ready for screenings around coming weekend. I can’t wait.

Where my Dutch album “Scènes” was a threesome project with my producer Crip Theeuwes and Artist Manager Gerry van der Zwaard, my English language songs are fully self produced. It means I wrote the songs, recorded them, mixed them and did all of the promotional activities. I often feel like the proverbial one-man-band. The next project getting this treatment is a video-clip for my latest song City of Secrets, which I wrote for bestselling author and Hollywood icon Patrice Chaplin.

I was wondering how I could make a fantastic professional video on a shoe-string budget. I then remembered that Patrice Chaplin had a Hollywood movie out in 1987 by name of Siesta. Now Siesta isn’t an ordinary movie. It was directed by Mary Lambert, a famous video-clip producer who had worked with Madonna, Sting and Janet Jackson. Siesta is the story of a woman waking up lying in a field in a Spanish airport with amnesia. During the film she pieces back together how she got there, involving a renewed romance with an old flame. When it came out, the movie was praised and trashed. You love it or you hate it. What most critics agreed on was it’s appealing high style and colorful exoticism. Lambert directed a star-studded cast. To nam a few actors in it: Martin Sheen, Jodie Foster, Gabriel Byrne, Ellen Barkin, Isabelle Rosselini, Julian Sands – even Grace Jones makes an appearance. The soundtrack was done by Miles Davis. Today, the movie is a Cult Film. It is truely a product of the eighties which is also the period during which I got bathed in my main musical influences. People regularly tell me my songs really sound like they were recorded in the 80s.

Like my song City of Secrets, Siesta is all about unrequited love. I realized the movie could really match the song and got in touch with Patrice’s publisher to see if there was any chance I could use some material from the movie. I couldn’t believe it when I got the news back from Siesta’s producer Zalman King (who is a bit of a legend himself), that I got the go-ahead to use scenes from the movie in a video for my song. It means that I am about to produce a video clip containing a Hollywood cast in fantastic 80s styling. No idea how I am ever going to thank Zalman, Patrice and her publisher for backing me up to this extent. I realize I am a privileged guy, having found people who like my music, recognize the hard work and who are willing to back that up.

It’s another great experience.

It’s been a crazy week. The release of The Book of Love got quite a bit of attention and since I am doing this completely on my own there are a lot of things to do. There’s interviews to do and basically trying to get as much exposure as I can to promote the song. Kathleen too has done her share and said some incredibly nice things about me on her Facebook and in her newsgroups for which I am very grateful. I am happy to report that things are going well. At this moment I exclusively get airplay that I am aware of on the internet, particularly on Jango.com. I believe it’s the largest fully interactive internet radio station in the US, representing 7 million listeners. In a week’s time, my song has been played over 1,500 times.

The best thing that happened in terms of promotion was the invite for a feature on Philip Gardiner’s show on Controversial TV on SKY. The show is called Gardiner’s world and is broadcasted on SKY 200. It’s a fantastic opportunity for me to reach a whole new audience. I already bought a new shirt. I will play two songs and do an interview. Philip has reserved a full hour to discuss my music and my research into Rennes-le-Château. The show will be recorded on October 2nd. I am very excited about it, not in the least because I will share the floor with author and researcher Robert Bauval, whose books occupy quite a bit of space in my living room.

There’s more news still. Around the time I was finalizing the Book of Love, I got in touch with Patrice Chaplin‘s publisher. For those who don’t know her: Patrice is a bestselling writer and playwright. She has written over 25 books. Her novel Siesta became a film starring Jodie Foster and Isabella Rossellini. As a Bohemian in Paris she spent time with Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Married to Charlie Chaplin’s son Michael, in Hollywood she worked with Lauren Bacall, Miles Davis, and Salvador Dali. She currently lives in London. When her book City of Secrets was published in 2004, it caused quite a stir. The book basically recounts how a young woman gets involved with the keeper of the Grail in the Spanish city of Gerona. The book, which is an autobiographical account, is beautifully written and has many touchpoints with the mysteries that are so dear to me. My next single will be called City of Secrets. It’s a song written for Chaplin about her book. Fortunately, she loved the lyrics and the music and even let me use a picture of her on the cover. The song is very different from Book of Love. Book of Love is completely unique in its emotion I think. City of Secrets is an up-tempo addictive pop song. It is a love song again but not like any other one you’ve heard I think. The song will have it’s TV premiere in the Philip Gardiner show. I am slowly releasing it to the internet channels as we speak. You might want to have a peep here.

Take care | Corjan