Experience with Stroomversneller: Julian Theelen (Five Suns) - Helios

''Five Suns has always been an audiovisual project, where I'm always looking for new ways to visually enrich my music. When I got into conversation with director Edwin van der Sande (also an Arnhem native!) about making a clip/short film to accompany one of my tracks, it quickly became clear that we had to make this work.''

Helios

''I have always been fascinated with the universe and space travel. Edwin shares this fascination. When we got together to discuss the first ideas for the clip, it quickly became clear that we wanted to do something with this. The song 'Helios' from my last EP takes hefty inspiration from the history of space travel, using samples from the control room of the Apollo missions. So this was the perfect candidate.

The basis of our ideas comes from a philosophical sci-fi book by Liu Cixin. In this book, Liu argues that the moment man permanently leaves Earth, he initiates the next step in evolution. Our concept for the clip was to follow an astronaut on a no-return mission, and delve into his mental state during this mission.''

"And then you start thinking. How on earth are we going to make a movie set in space? With an astronaut, in a spaceship? It quickly became clear that this wasn’t going to be an easy mission. And that we’d need a decent budget (and a lot of time and love) to bring this concept to life. Film crew, studio rental, equipment rental, props, construction materials, catering, visual effects... The budget ballooned very quickly.

Without the grant from Stroomversneller , we never Stroomversneller carried out this project. Thanks to the grant, I was able to cover a significant portion of the costs, and we didn’t have to compromise on the artistic vision and quality we had in mind from the start. So a thousand thanks! I’d also like to thank the team once again for their immense dedication. In particular, Edwin van der Sande for his vision and stubborn perseverance, Ray Kraaijenhagen for building a realistic spaceship (out of wood, a washing machine window, and a car seat we pulled from a junkyard car…), Steijn Leijzer for the bizarre shots, Cosette Legebeke for her help with production, and Luca LAL Tessarini for his dedication to his performance as an astronaut. And there are so many other wonderful people I’ve left out who helped me. It was also a true Arnhem production, with help from organizations like Supermassive and Het Nieuwe Kader.

The result turned out even more beautiful than I could ever have expected. The icing on the cake was the release on the YouTube channel “Trap Nation”—one of the biggest channels for electronic music on YouTube. Thanks to this, the video has already racked up over 65,000 views. I’m currently working on preparations for a new release. My next EP, “Skyward,” will be out in January via The Wave Stage!''

About Stroomversneller

Stroomversneller a grant program that supports new initiatives in their artistic development by giving them room to experiment. The goal is to help these initiatives gain momentum in an accessible way, without too many restrictions or obligations.

Click here for more information about Stroomversneller.