Moonlight by Steven Sharp Nelson

It was the evening of July 6 and we arrived at the Bonneville Salt Flats. We were in awe of our surroundings, and as soon as we got set up we began to get some awesome shots of Steven. We knew we had about a 10 minute window to get shots of sunset, so we worked like crazy to get as many shots as we could. We filmed into the night, and by about 1 a.m. we were on a high because we were so stoked about the footage we’d gotten. Not even a half hour later, however, we lost about 60% of our footage when our hard drive crashed!! We could not believe that things had gone so wrong! We were so worried about the project and just hoped that things would work out. We then made the decision to film through the night and capture the sunrise in hopes that we could replace our sunset shots with sunrise shots. Even though we were frustrated, we continued on through the night and tried to stay positive.

Sometime in the middle of the night we drove from the Bonneville Salt Flats to Wendover, Nevada to film in our second location. Because the Salt Flats are totally remote, we actually left a $40,000 Yamaha Disklavier grand piano out there because we knew we would be back in a few hours to film again. We thought it was spooky to be in the middle of the Salt Flats in the dark, (in fact, we actually saw a UFO and captured it via iPhone—true story ;)) but when we got to what we soon named “The Haunted Hangar” we were even more scared, especially Tel and Al. (We’re pretty sure it’s haunted by the WWII soldiers who served there). :)

We shot in the hangar for most the night and then headed back to the Salt Flats for our sunrise shots. Imagine hundreds of square miles of flat salt. Finding our equipment was like finding a needle in a Salt Flat! J Luckily someone had dropped a GPS pin on an iPhone app or else we would not have found our original location and all our equipment until morning, so we lucked out there.

We shot through the sunrise. By now we were all pretty tired having run around all night with no sleep. Steven had to leave by 6:30 a.m. for a concert, so we wrapped everything up. By then we were all covered in salt. Our shoes and clothes were covered in salt. Our cameras were covered in salt. Paul’s SUV and piano trailer we covered in salt, so much that you couldn’t see the floor in the interior. I think all of our food actually had extra salt. Exhausted and pleased with the work we had just done, we headed back for civilization.

…By the way, in post-production we were able to recover all our lost footage. Imagine our relief when we realized we had recovered all our hard work! It ended up being so much better that we filmed at sunset and sunrise because we had so much to work with. Had we not lost the footage (and then overcompensated), the final product would not have been nearly as good, so our challenge was really a blessing in disguise. We feel grateful that everything worked out in the end!

Below you'll find a link to the finished production. (Our behind the scenes video is coming soon!):

Also, below you'll find a podcast of Steven Sharp Nelson. In this podcast he gives a detailed account of his inspiration for "Moonlight" and his thoughts and feelings on the video:

Welcome to the Piano Guys Post

Welcome. First of all we'd just like to express our gratitude. We are having a great time making videos and would like to thank you for voting for us in YouTube's "On the Rise" contest in June. Thanks to you we now have the privilege to be featured on the front page of YouTube. We're a just couple of Guys with a camera, a computer, and some really talented friends. We are amazed at the overwhelming response our videos have received, and we love hearing your feedback. We are passionate about showcasing artist that are not big yet, but we know will be someday, and would love nothing more than to be apart of someones big break. It's a joy to bring exciting music to life through video, and we can truly say we love what we do. Thanks to our loyal subscribers we are having the time of our lives and who knows, maybe someday we will be able to do this full-time!

The purpose of this Blog is to keep our fans update on videos we are releasing, ones that are in the works, and the ideas and thoughts were having about future projects. We will also share the technics used to film the videos as well as information about the artists and the instruments that they play. This is an amazing ride for us and we look forward to sharing it with you.