A Dundee musician is set to release a new music video which was filmed in a very unusual setting.
The video for Nicola Madill’s upcoming single Mia sees the singer transformed into a mermaid and was filmed underwater at Dundee and Angus College using divers from the British Sub-Aqua Club (BSAC).
The video was shot by Lindsay Brown, who is a film maker from Fife who first learned to dive with BSAC eight years ago.
Lindsay, who owns underwater film specialist firm Stray Seal, had to teach Nicola and the other actors in the video how to control their buoyancy in the water and how to hold their breath, to make the video appear more realistic.
“It’s much more difficult to film underwater and people underestimate it when it comes to an underwater production,” she said.
“Everything changes in water and the way light transmits in water is totally different. There are costumes and choreography and then you have to consider how you’re going to portray real emotions to help tell a story.
“You can only get so far when your experience is limited to swimming. As a diver there are buoyancy issues and it’s about understanding how your body moves underwater.”
The team spent eight weeks preparing for the shoot, to allow for the preparation and training filming an underwater video requires. It was filmed at Dundee and Angus College in a single day.
Nicola Madill, who has been performing for over five years, said she was inspired to make the underwater video after spending time looking out to the sea from Broughty Ferry beach.
Nicola said: “We ran a campaign on Kickstarter to fund the project and within a month we had raised £2,500 which was excellent.
“I’m quite a confident swimmer but I had no idea of what the training would entail. When I started off I could only hold my breath for 14 seconds underwater and by the end of the training I could hold my breath for over two minutes.
“Lindsay was great and showed us different techniques of how to use our lung capacity to hold our breath for longer.”
