Hardwell ft. Jonathan Mendelsohn 'Echo' Music Video

Hardwell only had one wish for this music video: he wanted to have a music video in the snow. It was spring in Europe at the time, so there was not much snow left. But one of the producers I was working with at the time said there was still lots of snow in his home country, Bulgaria.

So, I jumped on Google, found this amazing Communist-style location in Bulgaria, and wrote a story about a widower who journeyed through his past with a friend's help. Together with producer Alex and lord camera Aziz Al-Dilaimi, we jumped on a plane to beautiful Sofia with the promise that we would deliver a music video shot in the snow.

When our plane started to descend, we could see the amount of snow left shrinking by the minute, and my worries about filming in the snow grew with the second. We set up camp in Sofia before heading out to our film location in the mountains in the following days.

Alex told amazing stories about growing up during communist times to keep my focus away from the melting snow. We changed lots of cash at the mobsters. We visited a guy at his communist-style apartment, which was actually the most badass & extensive camera rental company I have ever seen.

This guy had everything. Aziz was in heaven, and I prayed for snow…

The next day, after a few hours of driving through various landscapes, we arrived at the foot of the mountain of our location, with no snow to be seen. As we moved up, it started snowing and didn't stop for two consecutive days. It was the most snow our lodge host had ever seen coming down in such a short amount of time. My prayers were answered… 

In the end, the weather conditions changed so much during the 3-day shoot that we couldn't even film at the location where the story was based.

We had to rely heavily on our improvisational skills with winds up to 150km/h, sudden snowstorms, lighting conditions that changed every 15 minutes, and tea with rum that kept us warm during the shoot. 

Finally, we returned to Sofia with a bucket full of gold and smiles on our faces. It was an experience I will never forget and an adventure of a lifetime… 

You can read the full story here, including the possibility of seeing all the original documents used for pitching and filming this music video production.

Director - Robin Piree | Writer - Ashar Medina & Robin Piree | Producer - Nadjim Tsouli | Line Producer - Alexander Nedjalkov | Cinematographer - Aziz Al-Dilaimi | Editor - Robin Piree | Colorist - Wouter Suyderhoud