Welp, I’ve officially done the most ridiculous and embarrassing thing a grown adult can do. I understand that I say that a lot and perhaps have dramatized a scenario or two, but this one truly takes the cake. Let’s set the scene. It’s my third week in my new apartment. A few nights ago I’m doing my nightly TikTok scroll when I stumble upon an official Tok from Celine Dion’s account. She (her team) posted a clip of her greatest hit of all time (don’t fight me on this, I will win) “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” This song is uncontested for best car scream singalong and when I saw the dramatic snippet of the music video and her call for people to recreate it, I immediately knew what I needed to do. I’ve never felt more of a sense of duty to Celine. It was like she had cast the bat symbol into the dark Gotham City sky and I was Batman (Christian Bale’s version obviously.) I didn’t grow up imitating her French Canadian accent for laughs amongst my family members for nothing. It was my time to shine. Please feel free to immerse yourself in the original creation to really set the tone for this candid peek behind the scenes of my life imitating what it would be like if a 30 year old moved into the Hype House. (For fellow olds like me, the Hype House is a home where a bunch of teenagers live and create TikToks 24/7.)

The next day it struck me that I live alone now. I can really commit to the bit here and not fear someone hearing me or interrupting my stupidity to ask what the hell I’m doing. This is an insecure content creator like myself’s true wet dream. I began to prepare the creative of how I was going to tackle this video. The original music video (in case you didn’t have a spare 7 and a half mins to review it above) takes place in a castle during a stormy night as Celine mourns her ex. Those theatrics were really going to need some dedication and I was up for the job. First I had to unearth the only silk robe I own that also happened to be my gift for being in my sister’s wedding. It very boldly says Maid of Honor across the back. I’d have to make sure my hair covered that as I’m confident Celine has never been anyone’s maid of honor. She’s the star of the show or she doesn’t show up at all. I mean come on, did James Cameron win a buttload of Oscars for Titanic because he’s a great director? No he won them because he got Celine to create and sing her face off to the smash hit My Heart Will Go On. I’ll never let go, Jack? More like I’ll never get over how much of an iconic diva Celine Dion is.

Anyway, next I started to brainstorm how I could make it look like a stormy night in my opposite of a mansion new apartment. I only have one curtain in this shack to separate my “office” from my bedroom and I knew that’s where this tomfoolery was about to go down. It’s about time I used my office for some real work. I lit a candle for ambience and because she had a shit-ton of burning candles in the video (my production budget only allowed for one), got dressed in my silk robe, did my hair and makeup and began my grind of setting the scene. I don’t mean to brag but I’ve worked on a movie set, and sometimes you just need to do a little behind the scenes magic to make something believable. As it is now winter and I no longer have fans hanging around, that behind the scenes magic was the one, two punch of my space heater and my hair dryer to create a wind machine. Rigging both of these together to blow at the curtains was not only difficult but also was blowing the bottom, which was out of frame. I won’t reveal how many times I propped that hair dryer higher only to have it flop back down. I finally conceded and figured it was good enough. I also noticed that in this very 90’s music video, the lights flickered to really amp up the drama of the storm and also her ex haunting her, probably. So after several HQ takes of some of my FINEST acting running towards the curtains in disarray…

It was time to up the ante. With both my hair dryer and space heater on full blast for several minutes now, I decided to do a shot of just the “blowing” curtains and flicker the lights on my own. I hammered that light switch a few times then went to what we in the biz call “check the gate” (took a film class once) and suddenly I was in pitch black darkness. My little moviemaking antics for a TIKTOK had blown a fuse. Spielberg over here had gotten so carried away in the process that I forgot that I was in a 220 year old brick house and not a Hollywood soundstage. Panic ensued.

I immediately made quick work of unplugging the hair dryer and stashing it back in the bathroom. I tried to listen for outbursts from my upstairs neighbors, not knowing if I had affected their power as well. They seemed normal amounts of loud and not angry at the new girl for cutting electricity loud. I glanced at myself in the mirror wearing a silk robe with my name embroidered on it and a red lip standing next to a tripod. My worst fear was that someone would abruptly knock on my door and find me like this. Do you know how hard it would be to explain that I’m not sharing solo footage for my OnlyFans account but in fact just getting in touch with my inner Celine circa 1996? I’m guessing they wouldn’t buy it. I immediately erased all evidence and texted my landlord after searching high and low for a fuse box. Of course it wouldn’t be in my apartment. I acted casj cool in my text. “Hey it’s me, your new tenant! I made an oopsie and blew the fuse because I was drying my hair with the space heater on. Can I get access to the fuse box to reset it?” He was kind enough to zip right over and power things up again, with a gentle reminder that this house is old as dirt and that there’s only 15 amps per 6 outlets, as if I would ever know what that means. What a guy. He has no clue he’s renting to a complete moron who thinks dressing her bedroom as a set for a 20 second video is absolutely necessary. Hopefully he never knows. He doesn’t strike me as the type to google somebody, but should he stumble across this blog one day—I wasn’t blow drying my hair at 8pm when I haven’t left the apartment all day. I was trying to Beyonce the SHIT out of a music video shoot. Sorry not sorry. (I’m just kidding I actually am sorry pls don’t evict me, I just got everything unpacked.)

(I mean seriously are the curtains even moving?!)

It should come as no surprise to you that the shot that blew the fuse STUNK. In fact, I forced it into the final video (a measly 2 seconds) as homage to my landlord and the fact that he rectified the situation at lightning speed so that the shoot could continue without additional production days. Once the power was back on we were off to the races and by that I obviously mean I spent another 1-2 hours shooting 6 zillion takes of me lip syncing because I’d rewatch it and immediately coach myself that I could do it better the next time. Thank GAWD there were no witnesses to this. Then on top of that, I started the editing process and realized that when you’re not a 14 year old who lives and breathes TikTok, it’s actually super hard to use and since there was no way on EARTH I was going to shoot that thing in one take live (was any accredited feature film shot live?!) I was forced to spend hours using two different apps to match me and Celine up as best as I could.

The final product is below. It’s probably the shittiest 20 seconds that’s ever caused a power outage. But if you watch it enough times on repeat like I did trying to sync our powerful singing up, you’ll start to see that I basically am Celine Dion. Is there a difference between the two of us? No, no there is not. Unfortunately for my ego, which reached its pinnacle right around the time I did a full face of makeup and decided adding a dramatic rosé sip at the end would really incorporate my own personal brand into this reboot…my TikTok got a measly 49 views and 2 likes. On the bright side someone did comment “10/10.” So thank you for your kindness, stranger. It is words of encouragement like that I’ll remember fondly the next time I’m spending an entire evening by myself with my tripod, convincing myself I’m Celine Dion in the flesh, creating a city-wide blackout.