I asked him what was the budget on the last video he completed. He told me that he had just finished one for Warner (one of the major record labels) and that budget was $97,000. I laughed and told him, "We're getting ready to film a video for a single we're going to release called "Rainy Days at the Beach," and I told a video company yesterday that $3,000 was too much.
"Oh." he said. "I really like your artist....send me the song....I'll see what I can figure out." I sent him the song and figured I'd never hear from him again.
About a week later I got another call from him. " I have an idea.... let me talk you through it." He explained the idea...which I will let Jeff talk about, and told me " I'll give you a video that looks like it cost $100,000 for a $6,000 budget.
I told him I loved the idea, but the budget was more than we had planned and I wanted to talk with Jeff and I'd get back to him.
Sable: He really did have a great idea and we were able to pull it off. We rented a sailboat and its captain. Our film crew and my brother Chris and I sailed the boat. We got a permit to film on an uninhabited Federally protected island off the coast of California. It had no electric, no phones, no water.....and NO DOCKS!
So once we sailed the boat to the island we had to transfer all the equipment from the sailboat to the island on dinghies. That was no easy feat. (laughing) I had just boat a new guitar for the shoot and the salesperson told me that its case was bump proof, even water proof. I thought at the time, "Yea like I'll need a water proof guitar case." Well sure enough my new guitar fell into the ocean during the transfer and I watched it float on by. I had to chase it down. I sure valued the water proof case after that.
We stayed on the island for two days and filmed. There was so much wind cutting across the island that everything that wasn't weighted down would blow away. We slept in tents and had to put the tents behind wind breaks to keep them from blowing away. It turned out to be quite the adventure.
DD: That was such a beautiful girl that played your dream lover in the video.
Sable: Kevin had sent us a lot of pretty girls to look at. We had debated about several of them before we told Kevin who we thought would be good. Then when Chris and I got off the plane in California Kevin showed us another girl that he thought we should use. Nadia was her name, and she had been a host of "E" Television in Italy and had come to this country to become known here. Kevin told us that some of the girls we had picked had turned us down because they didn't want to spend two days on an island, especially because we had a low talent budget. I sent Max her photo and he agreed she would be good.
Nadia was the sweetest person....and she was experienced at being on camera, which helped out a lot because she knew how to make me feel at ease. Even though I'm used to playing in front of thousands of people that's a lot different than performing in front of a camera. Nadia helped me get comfortable with it.